The two-hundred-foot stellar pestle screamed as it plummeted through the sulfurous smog.
Its colossal mass displaced the atmosphere, creating a howling vacuum that sucked the flames inward. The cracked Void Lotus dome groaned beneath the descending shadow, its golden petals buckling like dry leaves beneath an iron wheel.
Deacon Vane dropped his pencil, his hands trembling as he stared through the fissures.
“Eighty million tons of condensed stellar meteor iron,” Vane stammered, his eyes glazed with terror. “At that terminal velocity, the impact kinetic force will crack the continental shelf three thousand miles deep.”
“Sera! Hold the primary pillar!” Claire shouted, her hands bloody as she pressed her broken compass against the stone.
“I am holding!” Sera roared back, her teeth stained with crimson.
Fifty feet above the camp.
Thirty feet.
