Page 60 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)

COHESION

The pause was eternal.

Cohesion was frozen, aware of itself in a terrifying moment of stillness.

Everything else was frozen too, each boulder of the planetrage that suddenly seemed motionless mid-shot. The sky caught in a ripple like a picture of a rumpled blanket. Water droplets that remained unmoving in a rain that did not fall.

The silence was deafening.

Cracks appeared from the heart of everything frozen, like a cave-in, sucking matter and rain and earth and soil and the whole planet into a yawning blackness.

So fast, so long, yet instantaneous. Cohesion had no time to respond.

Everything ripped—edifices crumbling, the vriksh snapping through the middle, the great blackness eating all physicality up. Dissolution chewed through the planetrage, coming for Cohesion from all directions.

Cohesion balked, an animal in a trap. Stunned, frozen, helpless.

Prey.