This is most likely the prologue to book 2. Most likely. Because all the usual stuff remains true: content is subject to change, there may be typos and grammar mistakes, as well as continuity errors.
With all that in mind, read on! Oh, and if you’re interested in reading along as I do my first draft, please leave a comment below. I plan to get that up and running soon.
Blythe shrugged away the chills that flashed across her skin like an electrified cloak as she gazed through the trees up at the hill halfway across the valley. Though the night was moonless and dark, the building and its surrounding area gave off as much light as an eclipsed sun. Thousands of watts burned. It was like looking at a small city nestled on the foothills of a distant mountain. Only, the lives that city knew were the billions of human stories turned into digital signal and pixels and broadcast across airwaves.
She knew this place. Had known it as a barren mountain that was beautiful in its own quiet way—it was unobtrusive, something a person only noticed in passing, unless they’d grown up around it, like she had. The concrete structure, the enormous electrical substation nearby that powered it, and the glaring lights that consumed the formerly welcome darkness, all of it represented a sort of untamable leviathan. A thing that could never be overwhelmed or reduced to a manageable size or broken down and forced into submission. It was too big. Or so it had always seemed.
She would be glad to see it crumble.