When the Keystone Dog locked into its seat, the Ark Nadir ceased to be a ship upon a dead sea.
It became a cathedral of living stone, twelve leagues long and four leagues wide, lit up from keel to dome by the warm, amber fire of ten thousand awakened giant statues. The darkness that had clung to the upper clerestories for twelve thousand years was driven back, replaced by a soft, diffused golden radiance that made the vaulted ceilings look like an open, sunlit sky at late afternoon. The great shadow of the outer ocean, which had hung over the human spirit like a headsman’s blade, dissolved in the radiant amber wash. The walls no longer confined. They sheltered.
High above the central plaza, the great dome of the Tiered hall of Ten Thousand Souls rose three hundred arm-lengths into the warm air. Its coffered rings, earlier choked with black soot from refugee cookfires, were now alight with golden sharp-angled rosettes. Each rosette depicted a sky-high star-pattern from the First Universe, its inlaid lapis and silver stars glowing with cool, crystal-clear care, re-creating the map of a sky that had drowned before mortal memory began. The sound deep ring within the dome created a gentle, whispering echo that seemed to carry the distant surf of ancient, sunlit beaches.
