High above Crater Island, the golden celestial eye flared with blinding, apocalyptic radiance.
The clouds across a hundred miles of ocean shattered into golden fragments.
The air grew so dense that mortal sailors on the lower tiers collapsed, their lungs burning as the atmospheric pressure surged tenfold. The sea around Crater Island flattened into an eerie sheet of dark, motionless glass.
High on the flagship bridge, Princess Valeria drew her twin sabers, her knuckles trembling against the ray-skin hilts. She knew that mortal steel was useless against an imperial decree, but her warrior’s pride refused to let her yield.
Elder Sterling leaned over the forward railing, his deep voice roaring through a brass speaking horn. “All vessels, brace! Angle the spirit-shields forty degrees! Don’t let the backwash capsize the fleet!”
From the center of the celestial pupil, a lance of condensed imperial law shot downward.
It was three feet thick, humming with the terrifying decree of Sovereign Solon. The beam was forged from the compressed laws of the Upper Firmament, carrying the cold authority of thirty thousand liquidated sects.
Twenty-eight distinct clauses of imperial statute were inscribed along the golden shaft. The runes mandated that any mortal entity harboring unauthorized cultivators was condemned to immediate soul-dissolution.
