The western sky turned the ugly purple-black of a fresh bruise.
This was no ordinary cloud bank. A wall of darkness rolled across the heavens, hiding the moon and stars from the Border Rift to the eastern coast. Five thousand miles of sky vanished beneath churning clouds.
Directly above Mount Clear Sky, the clouds folded inward and formed a vortex thirty leagues wide.
It turned with the slow grinding of a giant millstone. Violet lightning forked through its center. The deep thunder rattled teeth and shook loose gravel down the mountain.
KRRRRR-BOOM!
Wild pigeons dropped from the cedar trees fifty miles away. Ancient spirit beasts buried their noses in the soil and whimpered. Even the mountain seemed to groan beneath the pressure.
The oldest sect records had a name for it: the Nine Heavens Myriad Star Annihilation Tribulation.
According to those records, it appeared when someone gathered enough power in one place to strain reality itself. Three hundred thousand years earlier, an ancient fiend god had called down the same tribulation. By sunrise, seven kingdoms and three mountain ranges had become fields of glass.
Along the terraces of Mount Clear Sky, fifty thousand newly hired trench workers hit the dirt.
Shovels, tampers, and levels clattered across the gravel.
“The lightning is in our tools!” a young disciple screamed. Blue sparks snapped from his metal buttons. “The sky thunder gods have poisoned the iron!”
Grand Elder Xuan Xiao wrapped his arms around a survey stake and pressed his face into the mud.
“The Annihilation Tribulation,” he gasped. “The Heavenly Dao has opened its eye! Three hundred sects and fifty thousand souls will be erased before dawn!”
Near the main drain, Patriarch Iron Blood fell to his knees. His orange vest whipped in the wind, and blue static crawled over his hard hat.
“One bolt stretches fifty miles,” he whispered. “Not even a Divine Transformation ancestor could survive that sky.”
Disciples huddled in the trenches and pulled their safety vests close like burial shrouds. Some began chanting funeral prayers.
On the porch of the Tier 2 Timber Lodge, Austin set aside cold jasmine tea and read the repair rotation.
Xuan Xiao wanted to keep his best trench crew on the return line until the job was done. They had already worked ten hours. Austin ordered a fresh crew to take over and made Xuan Xiao stay only long enough to explain the grade marks.
Iron Blood objected too. His Tower 4 workers knew exactly which valves they had mishandled.
“Which is why they need sleep before they touch them again,” Austin said. “They’ll supervise the repair. They won’t swing tools until they’re steady. Being ashamed doesn’t make anybody alert.”
Both leads disliked the delay. Neither could argue with the shaking hands of the people being relieved.
Austin tested the cedar railing with his thumbnail. The marine tung oil had cured hard. Not a tacky spot remained.
At his feet, Cerberus Pug sprawled across his blanket like an eight-hundred-pound doormat. Static snapped around his three brows. His middle head snorted and tucked itself deeper into the folds.
Austin pushed his hard hat back and studied the vortex. The wind smelled of ozone and wet stone.
“Unforecast storm. Typical. We’re a day from ignition, and the weather service is asleep.”
A harsh alarm sounded. Amber-and-red text filled his vision.
Austin’s jaw tightened.
He ignored the talk of heavenly judgment and read the safety warning twice. Then he slammed his grease pencil onto the drafting board.
“Are you kidding me? Five hundred megavolts over my new cooling system? Two hundred thousand amps per strike?”
He pointed at the eight silver-steel towers.
“We put eighty-foot metal structures on an exposed summit without one lightning rod or grounding conductor. What kind of hack wrote this plan?”
He began pacing.
“One direct hit could weld a fan shaft to its bearings and burn out every control board. And it voids the warranty. Five-year limited replacement, gone. Lightning damage from an ungrounded structure is excluded!”
Tie Kuang and Jiang Taixu ran up the porch steps, both pale and out of breath.
“Master Chu!” Tie Kuang stammered. “The Heavenly Dao has passed judgment! Forty thousand thunder gods are coming to sweep Sunset Peak into the void!”
“Thunder gods don’t pay for replacement bearings!” Austin snapped. “Do you know the lead time on a custom fifteen-foot fan housing? Three to six months! Are you paying the freight from Vault 04?”
Tie Kuang shrank back. “But the ancient texts say the Thunder Monarchs punish anyone who challenges the heavens!”
“They strike things that aren’t grounded! Lightning isn’t a moral judgment. It’s current looking for the easiest path. Give it a thick copper conductor, and it takes the copper.”
Jiang Taixu drew the carpenter’s pencil from behind his ear and held it like a sword.
“If the heavens refuse to negotiate, shall this old sword immortal cut the storm clouds in two?”
“That’s a rule-break of National Spark Code Article 250. You don’t sword-fight lightning, Jiang. You bond it and route it. Give it a smooth, low-resistance path away from the equipment.”
Austin tapped his clipboard.
“Our towers sit on black glass, which barely conducts anything. A strike would spread across the plaza, jump into the lodge, and blow the nails out of my rafters.”
He turned toward the freight elevator.
“Tie Kuang, get the foundry on the intercom.”
“What do you need, Master Chu?”
“Twelve solid Cold-Iron copper-alloy rods, one hundred feet long and four inches thick. Sharp strike points on top. Plus three thousand feet of five-hundred-MCM braided copper grounding cable.”
Tie Kuang’s mouth fell open. “Twelve hundred-foot rods? And three thousand feet of cable as thick as your wrist?”
“We have twenty-three hours before the storm peaks. One rod for every cooling tower, two for the lodge, and two for the battery yard. We tie everything into one grounding grid. Nobody voids my warranties with sky noise.”
Tie Kuang grabbed the brass intercom handset.
“Floor 2 Foundry! Heat the copper crucibles! Master Chu wants twelve lightning rods and three thousand feet of braided grounding cable! Stop skimming slag and start pouring, or I’ll throw you in the scrap hopper myself!”
Above them, the vortex tightened. Its violet center pulsed as if offended by the man shouting about warranties and delivery times.
Austin rested the head of his pipe wrench against the porch boards and looked straight into the storm.
“You want to dump five hundred million volts on my peak?” he muttered. “Fine. But you’re paying for the kilowatt-hours.”