The triumph of the Sovereign Conclave at the Shallow Gates felt like stepping into an abandoned tomb whose air was laced with poison.
Zhu Heling walked through the shattered cedar portal of Entry hall 109, his iron-soled boots ringing with hollow, metal arrogance against the wet marble flags. Behind him followed forty elite bodyguards of the Obsidian Scroll hall. Their heavy void-steel axe-spears were held at the carry, their faces hidden behind blackened brass visors. Two high-pressure steam trucks rumbled through the breach, their iron wheels grinding the fallen timber struts of the refugee breastwork into shredded kindling.
“Secure the outer edge!” the Grand Commander of the Iron-Hull Guild barked, stomping through three inches of receding salt water. “Where are the granaries? Where are the prisoners?”
The forty bodyguards fanned out across the vast, shadowed expanse of Entry hall 109, their weapons leveled, their spirit-senses flaring outward to detect hidden ambushes.
They found nothing.
The grand entry hall was utterly empty. Along the walls. There, the Conclave intelligence had reported ten thousand refugees huddled in squalor, there were only cold, empty hearths of gray stone, swept clean of ashes. In the side alcoves. There, the wounded should have been groaning in agony, there were only neat stacks of dried cedar shavings, bundles of dried kelp-stalks tied with rawhide cords, and clay pot jars filled with clean, settled rainwater left untouched on the flat stone slabs.
