Entry hall 224 was a massive row of stone pillars known in the Second Epoch plans as the Gallery of the Thousand Porphyry Pillars.
The hall stretched ninety arm-lengths from north to south, its ceiling supported by a dense forest of eight-sided columns quarried from royal purple red stone. The stone had been sharpened to a satin finish that drank the light, casting soft, violet-tinted reflections across the damp flat stone slabs. Because of the thickness of the columns—spaced barely four paces apart—a man standing ten paces away would vanish entirely from view behind the fluted stonework, swallowed by the endless sight grid of purple stone.
Here, gathered on the central dry dais around a broken fire bowl, sat the shivering leftovers of the outer sect’s officer core.
Commander Gao had been hauled from the settled mud hopper by his men, his armor battered, his spirit-sword sheathed in shame. Around him huddled Master Jiao from the blind cross-hall, Senior Magic charm-Master Chen with his ink-stained hands, and eight surviving squad leaders. They were exhausted, their provisions soaked with salt water, their spirit-energies fully drained by the cold stone damp of the lower vaults.
They sat upon their overturned shields in bitter silence, waiting for whatever spectral terror haunted the shadows to deliver the killing stroke.
