The sixth hour of the low slack brought a drift of white mist through the high window row vents.
Qiao Ming moved through Entry hall 258, his footsteps producing a dull, wet thud against the black dark rock flags. The air here was colder than in the entry portal, carrying a bitter, bitter-salt dryness that coated the back of his throat whenever he drew a deep breath. It was the residue of glass-fused ash—ancient fiery and sky fallout that had settled into the crevices of the stonework when the sky first cracked open above the ocean.
Before him, towering forty arm-lengths from stone stand to capital, stood twelve huge columns arranged in a double row along the nave.
These were unlike any pillars he had surveyed in the first two hundred entry halls. They were fluted, but the fluting had not been cut with chisels or copper saws. The stone showed clear signs of extreme, unnatural heat. The ridges between the flutes were melted and rounded, running down the upright shafts in long, frozen tears of glassy melted rock waste. In places where the heat had been fiercest, the dark red stone had turned a pale, chalky violet, its surface crazed with millions of tiny heat fractures that felt like rough sandpaper beneath his fingers.
