At the sound of Nara Soth’s voice from the Listening Crown, Chief Examiner Vaska Ren held his raised hand frozen for two more heartbeats. He listened past the dust falling from the vault ribs into the deeper stone acoustics of the mountain peak.
Up in the circular chamber beneath the spear-width sky-slit. There, the dark restraint needles passed through carved channels in the living rock, not a single ward line had fractured. Because Seyun and Mina had spent the night unloading Pera’s twelfth share across three complete rounds of breath before drawing the wire, the pillar had not suffered a sudden empty pocket shock. Instead, as Osen Tal’s second sketch had shown, the one-twelfth fraction of downward pressure had settled smoothly into the three original Balance limestone tripod lugs. The exact stone foundation the abbey’s first builders had cut three hundred years ago to bear the mountain’s weight without human hostages.
The deep rumble beneath the flat stone slabs subsided into a low, settled hum, half a tone deeper than before and fully stable.
Slowly, Vaska Ren lowered his raised right hand and released his late Jade Sky-slit intention.
The crushing sky weight lifted from the vault. The flattened blue beads of the oil lamps sprang back into warm yellow tongues, and by the corner cupboard the two ward attendants let out ragged breaths as the floor stopped shaking under their knees.
