At the southern terminus of the casting beds. There, the glass-fused melted rock waste gutters came together into a single deep drainage water chute, the floor of Entry hall 661 rose into a massive platform of dark, unpolished andesite. Rising from the center of this platform was a massive stone monument unlike any other structure in the underwater halls: the Iron Cenotaph of the Fire-Keepers.
Forged from a single, unbroken metal bar of star-fallen iron sixteen arm-lengths high and eight arm-lengths square, the cenotaph stood without mortar or clamps, held in place purely by its huge crushing weight. Its four upright faces had been ground flat by heavy-duty emery stones, polished to a dull gunmetal sheen that reflected the yellow flame of Qiao Ming’s horn lantern like dark ice.
Qiao Ming approached the monument with bare, silent feet. His calloused soles were blackened by the fine soot of the casting beds, but as he stepped onto the andesite platform, he felt an immediate, deep change in the shaking state of the bedrock. The uneven, high-hum tremors caused by distant void-borers in the upper strata were fully absorbed here. The monolith hummed with a pure, unchanging fifty-two-hertz tone—the foundational ringing of the Drowned Dao’s deep-sea keel.
