The Central Lantern of Entry hall 020 was a massive sphere of cast optic quartz, ten arm-lengths in width, suspended from the apex of the ninety-arm-length dome by twelve bronze counter-chains.
Carved during the ancient dawn of the Ark, the lantern was designed as a stone-built projector. A master rig capable of reading the tiny carved grooves of the foundational building slates and casting their sharp-angled blueprints across the vaulted ceilings to guide the stone-masons across hundreds of years of construction.
For ten thousand seasons, the quartz sphere had hung dark and silent in the high gloom, gathering dust and the white droppings of storm petrels. Now, as the millions of refugees poured into the vast atrium of Entry hall 020, fleeing the threats of the Conclave’s heralds, the chamber was filled with the anxious murmur of a displaced great realm that did not know where it would lay its head.
Yan Zhiqiu stood upon the high projector gallery sixty arm-lengths above the crowded floor, her hands resting upon the brass gimbal rings of the quartz sphere. Her face was washed clean of soot. Her hair was freshly braided with rawhide. And across her chest rested the Broken Slate, its dark shale surface gleaming under the amber light of Qiao Ming’s surveying lantern.
