The Great Acoustic Nave was no longer a stone-built space. It was a screaming engine of chronological disintegration.
Above the forty-pace deep gap of the Causal Fissure, the air didn’t shimmer with heat. It curdled with cold, lilac-tinted static. Sound moved in staggered, fractured bursts—a man’s shout would echo three seconds before his mouth opened. Meanwhile, the metal crash of a dropped bronze basin stayed in the curved dome like an endless, decaying drone. Down in the boiling depths of the fissure, ribbons of violet star-fire twisted around pillars of liquid silver, vomiting sheets of grey time ash that coated the bronze floor plates in a slick, chalky dust.
Along the outer edge, Vane Vale was darting between the stone pillars. His walking cane waved like an officer’s baton as he directed the defense of the walkway. “Corin! Look at the lateral tie-rod on support post four!” the merchant bellowed, his tailored velvet coat splattered with grey lime dust. “The pulling shear has already stripped three threads from the retaining nut! Wedge two iron crowbars beneath the pipe rim and hammer them home! If that support post snaps, the entire northern walkway will cantilever into the deep gap. My life insurance policy on Master Corin’s bindery apprentices will become right away payable! I refuse to settle thirty casualty claims before breakfast!”
