Leaving the smoking wreckage of the breach gallery behind, Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu stepped through the southern archway into the grand central approach of the safe hall: Entry hall 748, The Avenue of the Iron Sovereigns. Here, the utilitarian building of the foundries and the defensive armor of the castle walls yielded to a realm of massive, sacred stonework. It was built to enshrine the ultimate sky-high instruments of the First Epoch.
The avenue was forty arm-lengths wide and three hundred arm-lengths long, flanked on either side by twelve huge massive stone statues of ancient water-scribes and stellar mapmakers, carved from dense black dark rock sixty feet tall. Each figure stood in ritual stance, holding the ancient tools of their calling: folded star wheels, heavy sounding plumbs, ivory sighting quadrants, and rolls of engraved bronze thick parchment. Their stone faces were carved with calm, unbending gravity, staring down the long hall toward the distant sanctum.
The walls of the avenue were built from polished blocks of fiery black glass, ground to mirror flatness and inlaid with delicate, hair-thin veins of native gold-silver metal that traced the thirty-six prime spirit veins of the ancient world. Qiao Ming’s bare calloused feet stepped rhythmically across the cold, glass-smooth floor flags. The air in this hall was dry, freezing cold, and utterly still, holding a faint, dry stone fragrance of stone-hard amber and dried cedar that had stayed undisturbed across ten thousand seasons.
