Twenty hours of quiet ended with the shriek of warped iron.
High in the stone shaft above the central well, the heavy hemp cables suddenly snapped.
A shower of crushed salt crust and splintered timber rained down into the turquoise lake, sending violent ripples slapping against the mossy banks.
Down on the shore, Elder Sterling rested his hand on his longsword hilt beside the black mud. “The surface winch! Someone cut the surface winch!”
Above them, through the seventy-foot ventilation tube, the distant, brassy roar of imperial war-horns drifted into the cavern.
Five thousand heavy siege infantry of the Iron-Blood Column were marching into the Sunken Salt Ruins above.
At their head rode General Dravus’s personal vanguard commander, Siege Commander Kenneth. The Nascent Soul Early warlord was draped in black iron plate, wielding a massive double-headed war-axe.
At the very same second, a deafening tremor shook the eastern fault line.
