The deep ringing hum between the twin vaults didn’t merely stabilize the physical mantle. It awakened an echo sleeping in the deepest strata of the Earth’s spiritual memory.
Through the underground relay connecting the convergence chimney pipe back to the golden heart of Vault Three, a river of golden light flowed across the cave ceiling. The light came together above the calm white star-fire lake. It condensed into an amazing, half-mile-wide sphere of blinding, kind solar heat wave.
Arthur Vance shielded his eyes. He watched the phenomenon through the aligned lenses of his magnifying glass. Beside him, Grimm dropped into a low, respectful crouch, his single ear perked forward. His charcoal fur shone with reflected golden light. Titus settled his massive belly shell onto the stone, his snake-like tail resting quietly against his flank.
From within the heart of the golden sphere, two huge wings unfurled.
The wings were woven from pure, blazing bright stellar star-fire, spanning more than twelve hundred meters across the underground deep gap. Three divine golden legs, each thick as an ancient redwood and tipped with claws of star-forged diamond, dropped from a body of living sunlight.
It was the Archaic Solar First-born. The ancient Jinwu Matriarch who had guided the solar cycles of the pre-Rift cosmos before the Great Famine had forced the ancient beasts to fold their divine exons into urban strays.
