The shore of the quicksilver lake was bordered by a low, curved stone temple steps of pale green jade, worn smooth by ten thousand years of liquid silver tides.
Qiao Ming stood at the water’s edge, his bare feet gripping the cool jade curb. The lake stretched six hundred arm-lengths across, an unrippled circular mirror of pure, elemental quicksilver that sat at the base of the Obsidian Throne like a polished shield of molten moonlight. The liquid metal did not evaporate. It held no vapor, no scum, and no knee pad. Where the heavy silver met the pale green jade curb, the line of contact was exactly sharp. He reflected the millions of ceiling diamonds with such dazzling fidelity that looking down felt like gazing into the inverted deep pit of the pre-flood heavens. The liquid possessed a terrifying stillness, unbroken by drafts or heat gradients, holding its place through the sheer, inert mass of elemental hydrargyrum.
Beside him, Yan Zhiqiu gazed upward, her throat tightening at the staggering verticality of the black mountain before them.
From the center of the silver lake rose the Obsidian Throne. It climbed eight hundred arm-lengths into the sky vault, its massive stone flanks carved from a single mass of sky star-stone that had fallen during the birth of the first star-patterns. The sheer mass of the throne exerted a visible curve upon the space around it: the starlight from the ceiling diamonds did not travel in straight lines as it approached the Sovereign’s…
