An hour before dawn, the outer rim of the fourth basin still lacked two handfuls of dense mineral grit to seal the sluice lip. Osha sat by the shaded oil lamp with her father’s open journal on one knee and the last surviving archive stone—the Falling Bells stone—resting on a flat anvil block between her boots.
Before she cracked the stone’s heavy outer mineral casing to finish the mortar, she pressed her warm thumbs into the recessed clerk-seal on the underside, opening the deepest inner stratum that temple novices were never shown in lecture halls.
Ysabet, Ashaun, and Pip gathered close around the block as the amber veins inside the stone lit one final time.
Earlier they had seen the outer battle record: the coalition spears breaking the bell housing and the forty thousand soldiers dropping into the mud. This inner layer had been recorded from inside the central bell itself, twelve minutes before the coalition spears arrived.
In the amber light, the cramped, suffocating knot of Azhrak’s shared will flickered. For nine distinct breaths, the old god actually tried to open his hands and let his battalion go.
Across the western ridge of Falling Bells, Azhrak loosened the command links, trying to hand five thousand trapped men and women back to their own legs so they could flee the collapsing line before the rival gods struck.
