The warning in the ice took the shape of a jagged spider-web of white fractures spreading outward across the dark dome of the Glacial Nave.
Forty arm-lengths above the sovereign terrace. There, the vaulted ceiling had mirrored the ancient star-patterns for ten thousand years, the thick dark rock roof groaned under the crushing downward thrust of Zhu Heling’s void-borers.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
The clockwork pounding, once a distant rhythmic shudder, had grown into an ear-splitting earth-shaking roar that rattled the brass instruments upon Qiao Ming’s belt and shook the marrow of his bones. In the high strata above the vault, four separate drill stems were churning through the rock in tight formation. The backup boreholes—chosen Beta, Gamma, and Delta on the star compass’s mapping plate—were grinding through the outer edge flanks, cutting relief trenches to weaken the load-bearing arch of the ceiling. But the main assault was packed on Borehole Alpha, driving directly toward the zenith of the sovereign nave.
Through the widening fissures in the stone, plumes of white-hot sulfur gas—glowing an acrid, blazing bright yellow—burst into the freezing vault, hissing wildly as they collided with the minus forty-degree air of the sacred safe hall. The extreme heat differential produced instant heat shocks. Thick curtains of white vapor erupted along the vaulted ribs, condensing into a fine, acid-laced frost that settled over the lower terraces like toxic snow.
