Entry hall 751 was the threshold where the peaceful inside of the Ark Nadir ended and the brutal reality of the deep-sea void began.
Known as the Sunder-Gate, this sector consisted of one hundred massive transverse entry halls built from solid, armor-grade pig iron and plates of star-fallen steel three arm-lengths thick. Here, the outer hull of the Ark met the ancient black ocean. An infinite, crushing medium of dissolved spirit concepts and starving spatial currents that pressed against the vessel with a water-pressure load of eight point four tons of pressure. At this depth, eighty deep-water lengths beneath the surface of the drowned cosmos, a single square inch of steel was subjected to over twelve hundred pounds of unrelenting lateral force.
These star-fallen steel plates had been folded seven hundred times under huge steam hammers fueled by underground gas pockets during the Second Age. Each plate was secured to the hull’s rib-cage by double rows of six-inch copper rivets, caulked with vulcanized gutta-percha and powdered lead to create a joint impervious to deep-sea salt water. The master armorers who forged them had spent entire lifetimes calculating the yield stress of star-fallen cobalt, ensuring that when the outer cosmos dissolved, this outer edge would stand as an unbending castle wall between total nothingness and the fragile warmth within.
