The yellow oiled paper stretched drum-tight beneath a sky of white-hot dragon scales.
A hundred miles of condensed celestial authority plummeted toward the terrace of Moon Six. The Ice-Fire Extinction Edict tore through the upper atmosphere, turning drifting clouds into superheated glass.
Down on the stone platform, the vanguard braced for total annihilation.
Deacon Vane pressed his face into a fissure in the flagstones, his fingers clawing at the dirt. His silk sleeves trembled against the rock, and his teeth chattered so hard they sounded like rolling dice.
Old Barnaby raised his iron ladle, planting his feet wide apart. The heat blistered the rough skin of his forearms, but the old cook did not yield an inch.
Beside him, Sera Thorne drove the butt of Storm-Pike into the bedrock. Her dark eyes reflected the descending inferno as she waited for Kaelen to unleash the thirty-six thousand times strike.
Behind them stood Elder Sterling, his silver beard whipping in the furnace gale. His palms were flat against his knees, ready to burn every drop of his Saint Vessel essence to shield Mina and Claire.
The blast never came.
