The clouds beneath the Floating Mountain parted with the sound of tearing silk.
Two hours before dawn, twelve huge steel-silk cables—each as thick as an ancient oak trunk and woven from five-hundred-year sky spider silk and cold-forged iron—plunged three thousand feet from the underbelly of the floating citadel. The massive iron grappling anchors at the ends of the cables slammed into the frozen shale of the northern valley floor with bone-shaking thuds. It anchored the sky island to the land-wide bedrock.
High above, the massive bronze winch drums in the mountain’s building docks began to groan.
One by one, the twelve Obsidian Golems grasped the cables. Sliding down through the swirling mist like falling black meteors, their massive twenty-foot forms broke through the cloud ceiling in rapid row.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The impacts shook the entire river basin. Twelve craters erupted in the snow-covered earth as the titans landed. It sent plumes of crushed ice twenty paces into the air.
Da Shi, the First Epoch Golem Chieftain, straightened his massive frame. His polished black glass armor, hardened by millions of years within the world-size mantle and infused with Lin Xiao’s pure water-origin essence, gleamed with deep indigo highlights in the moonlight. His twin crystal eyes pulsed with calm, rhythmic azure fire as he assessed the terrain.
