The spirits did not emerge from the stone with the violent, wrenching rupture of specters tearing free from a tomb.
They stepped forward as a man steps through an open door on a quiet summer morning. For twelve thousand years, the leftover souls of the ancient masters had soaked the crystal-clear matrix of the statues, their mind preserved in stone frozen stillness by the cold, high-pressure salt water. In normal circumstances, a human soul cut from its living flesh would either scatter into the chaotic currents of the void or curdle into a vengeful wraith. But here, within the sacred stonework of the Ark Nadir, the First Builders had baked the statues in kilns fueled by dead stars, tempering the stone until its crystal-clear lattice could house human memory without distortion.
Now, as the standing wave of four hundred and thirty-two cycles per second established a sound bridge between the stone and the warm air, the boundary between stone and soul softened into a golden vapor.
Qiao Ming stood on the third landing of the Grand Marble Stairs in Entry hall 965. His bare feet were planted upon the dry, warm flat stone slabs, his toes lightly gripping the rounded edge of the riser. In his left hand he held the Folded brass star-compass, its fine measuring tongs set to measure the sight scattering of the golden auric fields forming along the rows of stone pillars. He could feel the sound pulse circulating through the stone. Not a cold, electronic…
