The hum of the Crystal Genesis Throne ceased to be a sound. It became a physical pressure that shook through Arthur Vance’s teeth, his ribs. The diamond-silver-steel lattice of his newly forged skeleton.
Within the ten-meter circular basin, the liquid crystal churned like molten glass caught in a storm. Five torrents of packed elemental light—umbral gravity, sun-hot solar star-fire, dense dark rock magma, razor-sharp spatial slivers, and deep-ocean storm mist—swirled in a blinding vortex of pure world-size aether.
Around the rim of the basin, the five raised quartz platforms locked into their maximum elevations, thirty feet above the churning floor.
“Precursor steadying set initiating,” Arthur said into his throat microphone, his voice cutting through the sound roar with crisp, cold and exact power. “Positions, now!”
The squad moved with the seamless, instinctual holding power of a pack that had fought through twenty death-zones together.
To the North, Titus took the first post.
The eighty-five-ton Northern Sovereign stepped onto the northern circular dais. As his massive, diamond-scuted paws struck the quartz surface, deep black-and-emerald runes flared across the stone. The platform groaned under the sudden application of nearby earth-shaking mass, but it didn’t buckle. Titus lowered his great dark rock belly to the stone, anchoring all four limbs into the locking grooves.
