Entry hall 444 was the sky-high heart of the Fifth Century, a soaring eight-sided chamber thirty-two arm-lengths high, crowned by an amazing ribbed small roof-dome of dark olivine dark rock pierced with seventy-two star-shaped oculi that channeled cold green bioluminescence down into the center of the hall.
In the center of this titanic room stood the Primordial Clepsydra.
It was a stone-built instrument of massive scale. A three-tiered tower of cast glowing-bronze and dark purple red stone thirty-two arm-lengths high, rising from an eight-sided basin of clear, circulating spring water. The tower was fitted with three huge nested star compass plates ten arm-lengths in width, engraved with the complete sky mapmaking of the pre-flood universe, showing the motions of three thousand drowned stars, the twelve seasonal colures, and the thirty-six deep-water tidal gates of the Ark.
On the front of the lowest tier, two bronze statues of robed astronomers stood upon a raised balcony, their stone hands holding small bronze hammers poised above two circular chime bells of ringing white jade.
Yet the instrument was dead.
The three huge star compass plates were frozen mid-revolution. The bronze astronomers stood motionless with their hammers suspended in the cold air. And the great bronze gear catch wheel at the top of the tower hung motionless, choked with green rust and hardened lime-frost.
