Fine granite powder was still settling across the grotto threshold when the first light of Day Ninety broke over the ocean above.
Two miles overhead, the blood-red gloom of the eclipsed midday gave way to a cold, unnatural dawn.
The Abyssal Fire Trench remained locked in an iron grip of silence, flanked by thirty surviving Saint-Iron array spikes.
High above the waters of Void Lotus Isle, Inquisitor Thorne-Crow stood atop the elevated bridge of his black Censorate vessel.
His iron-trimmed raven cloak snapped in the freezing northern wind.
Before him, hovering in the swirling clouds, were three colossal astral projections.
Each spectral figure stood sixty feet tall, their bodies woven from pure, condensed Saint Vessel Peak law energy.
On the left hovered the Ashen Sun Ancestor, seated within a chariot of blinding white solar fire.
