When the twin beacons of amber and violet passed the second archway of Entry hall 082, the appointed signal sounded from the high gallery.
It wasn’t a brass horn or a bronze bell. It was the clear, rhythmic strike of a sandalwood clapper struck by an old temple monk from the drowned monasteries of Mount Lu.
Tock. Tock. Tock.
The hollow wooden sound drifted across the water, carrying through the cool air of the lower vaults with total clarity. It was a sound that every farmer, merchant, and boatman in the Central Plains had heard at sunrise and sunset—a reminder that time had not ceased because the sky had collapsed into salt.
At that sound, along two miles of dark rock embankments, three million refugees bent their heads. Across one hundred and twenty terrace piers and flight stairs, thousands of rough mortal hands reached into their pouches for flint and steel.
A sound rose from the darkness—a sound like the rustling of dry autumn reeds in a river wind, mingled with the sharp, metal clicking of forty thousand strikers against river flint.
Clack. Clack. Ch-ch-clack.
In the shadow of the fluted pillars, the first sparks flew. Tiny points of orange light flared in the cupped palms of women and old men. Dried tinder caught. Slender plumes of fragrant smoke, scented with wild wormwood, dried pine needles, and crushed bitter pine-resin leaves, rose into the rows of stone pillars.
