Three miles behind the stern of the Sovereign Aurora, the middle stone span of the outer bridge collapsed into the Primordial Chaos Rift.
Millions of tons of shattered masonry tumbled into the roaring gray abyss.
Without the ancient gravity runes of the middle span to anchor them, the twelve thousand ascending mortal-world arks lined up along the outer approach suddenly pitched downward at a forty-five-degree angle!
On the deck of Ark #108, nineteen-year-old navigator Young Sister Qiao (Goodness: 90/100) threw both arms around the wooden helm as the iron mooring cable snapped with a sound like a rifle shot.
Her ten-year-old brother, Little Bean, slid across the tilting planks toward the broken stern rail.
“Sister Qiao, the bridge is gone!” Little Bean cried out as freezing gray chaos-wind tore at his coat. “The storm is pulling our boat backward!”
Young Sister Qiao let go of the wheel with one hand, lunged across the wet timber, and grabbed the back of her brother’s collar just an inch before he went over the edge.
“Hold onto my belt!” she shouted over the roar of the abyss, her knuckles white as she braced her boots against a splintered cleat. “Don’t look down!”
