Six hours later, Sterling’s braces had slowed the roof to a further six-foot descent. The cavern roof groaned like an iron portcullis, hanging thirty-four feet above the lake and barely twenty-five feet above the canvas roofs of the Vance ox-wagons.
The air was thick with the reek of hot granite, crushed salt, and copper blood-fumes.
Every breath tasted of pulverized stone and stale sweat.
Elder Sterling stood with his grey hair plastered to his forehead, his arms trembling violently as he funneled golden Nascent Soul Qi into the buckling stone arches. Beside him, Sera Thorne held Storm-Pike wedged beneath a sagging crossbeam, silver lightning arcing from her shoulders to reinforce the fracture points.
Commander Wu and the defecting centurions huddled around the central spirit-spring with the five hundred exiles.
Nobody spoke.
Even the crying infants had fallen silent, smothered by the oppressive atmospheric pressure of four million tons of descending rock.
Beside the three-legged Tier 6 Star-Iron Cauldron knelt Old Barnaby.
