The fourth session of the Council of Mortals convened when the hovering sphere above the Genesis Well shed its third halo of golden light.
Yan Zhiqiu stepped into the center of the circular marble stone floor, carrying the Broken Slate flat across her forearms. The dark stone, polished by the hands of eighty ages of keepers, rested upon a low tripod of cedar wood brought down from the carpenter’s stores. Its jagged fracture, which had once been cold and sharp as broken flint, now pulsed with a deep, steady emerald soft glow that cast green ripples across the white marble flags. She took a camel-hair brush from her leather kit, dipping the soft bristles into clear water drops to gently sweep away the fine white chalk dust that had gathered along the fracture line during their ascent through the upper galleries.
Beside her, Qiao Ming knelt with his wooden ruler and ink-horn. His bare feet were planted firmly upon the dry stone, his oilskin coat tied loosely at the waist. Around the marble outer edge, seventy-two guild elders and delegates watched in solemn silence, their rough, salt-hardened faces lit up by the green glow of the ancient object.
“For twenty seasons,” Yan Zhiqiu began, her voice clear, calm, and carrying the power of a royal scribe, “we believed this slate was merely a ledger of lost grain and dead names. We believed it was a memorial to a drowned empire, recording how many thousands entered the dark before the portals…
