Everyone in the vault heard the change in the ceiling array at the same instant.
While a tester had been coupled to the bronze collar, the twelve pale blades of the overhead Measure ring had turned with a heavy, rhythmic thrum—five beats of pressure, a brief clockwork reset, and another five beats—like a waterwheel driven by the flow through the floor cable. Soran and Daro had cut the main floor channel in that record. Then, the blades had drifted into a ragged, hunting circle, waiting for an officer’s tuning prongs or a replacement signal from the dais.
Now, with the bronze collar empty and Halin breathing on his own independent rhythm, the twelve pale blades stopped drifting altogether.
One by one, with a series of crisp, metal clicks that echoed off the vaulted ceiling, the twelve six-foot crescents of white-gold light tilted inward by fifteen degrees, locked their spacing into a tight twelve-pointed star beneath the roof opening. Then they began to spin without a single pause in their rhythm.
“Why isn’t it shutting down?” Ilyra asked sharply, keeping her shortened spear leveled as she backed one step closer to the chalk circle. “The floor cable is cut, the collar is empty, and Reth’s prongs are broken on the stone!”
