The iron teeth of the portcullis bit into the stone threshold, sealing the inner plaza behind two feet of solid steel.
Up in the shadowed ventilation shaft fifty paces from the main gate, Kaelen Vance and his companions crouched in the warm, sulfurous draft. Below them, the massive granite courtyard of Sector One swarmed with over a hundred elite furnace enforcers, their halberd tips glinting with scarlet fire runes.
Furnace Warden Krahl stood on the central dais, his molten iron whip smoking against the stones.
Opposite him stood the three newly arrived leaders of the Four Great Pill Houses.
At their head stood Vice-Patriarch Galen Morvane, a tall, slender man in layered crimson robes embroidered with golden cauldrons. He held a feathered ivory fan in one hand and a gold-trimmed balance scale in the other. His sharp, narrow eyes swept the plaza with cold aristocratic disdain.
Beside him stood Patriarch Pyre, a stout, red-bearded brute whose bare arms were covered in third-degree alchemy burns, and Patriarch Cinder, a withered elder wrapped in heavy gray robes that smelled of brimstone.
All three radiated the oppressive spiritual pressure of Golden Core Mid cultivators.
“You summoned us under emergency protocols, Warden Krahl,” Galen Morvane said, his voice smooth and haughty as he tapped his ivory fan against his palm. “My father, Patriarch Morvane, is preparing our bids for the Hundred-Sect Pill Auction. What could possibly justify halting our shipments?”
