The passage connecting Entry hall 200 to the central safe hall of the Third Stratum was known as the Threshold of the Unbroken Vow.
Spanning eighty arm-lengths across and twenty arm-lengths high, the portal was carved from a single huge monolith of dark emerald veined stone, polished until its surface reflected the torchlight like a mirror of deep, frozen sea-water. Above the top door beam ran an ancient stone carving carved in eighty-one seal-script characters of pure, cast gold:
Here sleep the Ten Thousand Sovereigns who gave their bodies to stone that the Dao might endure the Great Dying. Let no man bring iron to their knees. Let no man bring fire to their palms. For the stone remembers the living, and the water keeps their peace.
Through this massive portal marched the leftovers of the refugee vanguard, four hundred veteran hunters and craftsmen led by Yan Zhiqiu.
They didn’t carry the arrogant, clattering steel of the Conclave legions. Their weapons were light, pragmatic tools of defense: composite bows wrapped in felt, hooked polearms tipped with bone wedges, and heavy wicker shields lined with dried sharkskin. Behind them filed six thousand refugee civilians—the young mothers, the small children, the infirm elders, and the newborn infants who had been evacuated from the outer trenches during the battle of the water gates.
