The sound was not an explosion. It was the sound of an ancient continent cracking its deep main spine nerve in half.
From the stormy heights of Mount Khorat. There, the massive stone dark rock foundation of the Citadel met the clouds, three million tons of stonework, bronze castle walls, and broken foundation stone snapped away from the peak. The collapse tore downward through the upright cliffs of the Southern Gorge like a black glacier, uprooting thousand-year-old pine groves and grinding mountain granite into blinding clouds of slate dust that turned the rain into gray mud.
And riding the dropping heart of that cataclysm was a nightmare carved of living crystal.
It didn’t fall like dead rock. It rode the tumbling avalanche with terrifying, hungry intention, its huge amethyst chassis glittering with radioactive violet soft glow against the thunderheads. Every impact of its multi-ton talons sent sheets of raw time star-fire arcing across the wet cliffs. That turned streams into white-hot steam before its massive feet even touched the valley floor.
It struck the gorge bottom three hundred paces outside the Cinder Gate with the bone-shaking violence of a falling moon.
The blasting blast wave swept across the stone apron like a physical wall of iron. Three thousand refugees were knocked sprawling into the wet moss and heather, their cries swallowed by the thunderous boom of displaced air. A geyser of crushed shale, shattered pine trunks, and freezing water erupted three hundred feet into the stormy sky, raining mud and…
