The salt stalactites above Entry hall 102 were not silent.
As Qiao Ming waded deeper into the drowned hall, his ears caught a high, crystal-clear shaking—a faint, glass-like ringing that drifted down from the ceiling vaults sixty arm-lengths overhead. It wasn’t the hollow boom of the sea-surge against the outer breakwaters, nor was it the deep high-pressure thrum of the drainage chimney pipes. It was the sound of stress within crystal-clear stone: millions of tiny salt crystals expanding and fracturing under the slow, steady pull of gravity and evaporating salt water.
The water reached mid-thigh now. It was thicker than sea salt water, heavy and oily against his bare skin, smelling of old lye, bitter magnesium, and the cold lime dust of dissolving mortar. Every step needed an intentional effort of his quads. His splayed feet moved cautiously along the underwater stone floor, testing each slab for fractures before committing his full weight.
Around him, the halite columns rose like pale green giant pillars carved from solid ice. The ceiling above was fully lost in a dense canopy of salt needles, hanging downward in clustered ranks like the pipes of an ancient cathedral organ. Some were no thicker than a weaver’s needle-point arrow, while others formed huge tapering cones six paces thick at their root, ribbed with thick folds of pale flowstone that dripped nonstop beads of skin-burning water into the dark sump.
