The execution beam shattered into harmless crimson motes.
They drifted around Kaelen’s wicker stool like autumn leaves, fading into gray smoke before touching the ground.
Across the northern dais, Reef-Alchemist Zoran dropped his bronze staff.
His jaw hung loose, his bloody lips twitching as he stared down at the southern platform. The staff clattered against the stone, rolling into a puddle of medicinal dross.
“No,” Zoran muttered, his voice barely a rasping wheeze. “The Grand Execution Array... thirty-six obsidian conduits... it melts mountain peaks...”
He looked at Kaelen’s chest.
The faded gray fabric was intact. There was no singed wool, no scorch mark, and not even a trace of soot on Kaelen’s collar.
The four thousand spectators on the caldera tiers were struck dumb.
