The heavy cold-iron wheel snapped with an ear-splitting screech of stressed metal.
Lu Chen didn’t waste time unthreading the rusted lock-screws one by one.
He braced his left foot against the granite dais, clamped both hands onto the wheel rim, and jerked backward with eighty thousand foot-pounds of high-pressure torque.
BANG—CRUNCH.
The internal brass tumbler pins snapped into powder.
The five-foot-wide circular hatch flew open. It slammed against the stone floor with a blast wave that cracked the tiles.
A blast of unnatural, sub-zero air erupted from the shaft like a geyser of liquid frost.
The draft was so intense that the surrounding moisture in the Great Hall instantly solidified into fluttering flakes of rime.
