The first cluster of void-iron spikes was driven into the seam of the second main bearing cap, six arm-lengths above the churning pool of black oil.
There were twelve spikes in this cluster, each three feet long and four inches thick, forged from cold void-iron that had been cooled in the blood of dead sky dragons during the fall of the Seventh Realm. Their faceted shafts were not smooth. They were etched with tiny columns of dense cursive ideograms. Zhu Heling’s exact demonstrations proving that life was an entropic error. That mind was a temporary, malignant blister upon the smooth skin of the void.
From the tips of the spikes cried a steady, oily discharge of dark purple fluid that sizzled against the hot bronze of the bearing, emitting vapors that made Qiao Ming’s nostrils flare with bitter revulsion. The smell carried the stench of burned manuscripts, rancid bone-glue, and the cold despair of a scholar who had chosen to put out his own lamp.
The shaft beneath the bearing was rotating with a painful, stuttering tremor. Every few heartbeats, the journal-face ground against one of the embedded spike-tips, throwing showers of white-hot iron sparks that hissed into the sludge below.
