The heavy iron hatchway beneath Elena Vale’s statue stood open like the mouth of a dark well. It exhaled a warm, stone-scented draft that smelled of crushed starlight, lightning-scorched dark rock, and the deep, ancient breathing of the continent.
Master Ren had already dropped the first twenty iron rungs, his slate strapped across his chest, guiding Mira’s boots onto the ladder. Above them, in the ruined round hall of the western stacks, the air was still hazy with grey smoke and the sharp, coppery scent of the silver fire burning around Mira’s name.
Arch-Inquisitor Moros didn’t pursue them with his hands.
Deprived of his gold-silver metal censer, his bleached pigskin robes half-dissolved by his own deflected redaction fire, the judge staggered back against the marble stone base of Elena Vale’s monument. His silver mask was smeared with black soot. His colorless eyes burned with the cold, rabid fury of a bureaucrat whose power had been shattered by an unlicensed craftsman.
With his left hand, Moros reached beneath his torn mantle, unholstering a heavy, double-sprung repeating heavy steel crossbow forged from blackened steel.
The weapon was not loaded with ordinary steel quarrels. Clamped into the firing track was a three-inch bolt of solid, tightly packed burning acid-glass, tipped with a three-sided needle of refined lead. It was a Deep hum-Shatter Bolt, designed by the High court’s medical apothecaries specifically for executing advanced crystal-clear patients. If the lead tip struck glass-fused quartz, the blasting blast wave and packed strong etching acid inside…
