Entry hall 999 was the terminus of stone.
Beyond its giant stone archway lay no halls, no vaults, and no inner walls. The passage opened suddenly onto the lip of a huge circular volcano bowl, three hundred and sixty arm-lengths across, that dropped vertically into a deep pit of terrifying, sublime size.
This was the Well of Genesis—the sacred pool built at the geographic and spirit center of the Primordial Ark.
In the design of the First Sovereign, this volcano bowl was the pivot point upon which the entire voyage balanced. Behind them lay nine hundred and ninety-eight entry halls of stone, housing the ten thousand statues of humanity’s drowned ancestors—the massive weight of memory, history, and grief. Ahead, down in the glowing depths of the Well, lay the uncorrupted seed-waters of the next cosmos—the floating possibility of rebirth. To stand upon this rim was to stand upon the narrow razor-edge between the dead universe and the world waiting to be born.
Standing upon the unrailed stone coaming that formed the rim of the volcano bowl, Qiao Ming felt the full, crushing weight of the cosmic stonework press against his chest. Above their heads, the great black hull of the Ark arched outward like a hollow continent of stone-hard wood and bronze ribs, its ten thousand entry halls suspended in the darkness like cells in a huge honeycomb. Below their bare feet, the volcano bowl dropped into a depth that had no bottom in mortal shape.
