The discovery of the twin lineages was carved not into paper or silk, but into the living marrow of their bones.
On the twelfth tier of the dais, directly behind the water-lily throne, stood the Chancellery Altar. A box-shaped monolith of black star-fallen iron four arm-lengths wide and two handspans thick. Its surface was fully flat, polished to a dark, mirror-like sheen that caught the golden soft glow pouring from the Empress’s chest.
Empress Yan Huaisu looked down upon the two travelers, her sapphire eyes filled with solemn power.
“Place your palms upon the altar,” the Empress commanded, her cello voice echoing through the nave. “The Ark Nadir can’t be commanded by a single will. An scroll-keeper without a sounder records history without a rudder. A sounder without a scroll-keeper steers a ship without a port. From the founding of the Yan-Luo Dynasty, the scepter needed two hands to unlock its ultimate power.”
Yan Zhiqiu stepped forward first. She stripped the wool mitten from her right hand, placing her slender, ink-stained palm flat against the cold black iron.
The metal beneath her skin flared with vivid emerald light. Tiny channels within the iron, finer than tiny blood vessel vessels, drew a single droplet of blood from her palm through tiny blood vessel action. The blood was boiled away into pure starlight ether, racing through the internal matrix of the altar.
