The road through the Deep Stygian Vaults was not built for human feet.
It was a huge processional avenue, eighty paces wide, paved with huge massive stone slabs of non-terrestrial black star-iron. The metal had not rusted. After ten thousand years in the damp underground chill, its dark, mirror-polished surface still reflected the amber glow of their lanterns with oily, rainbow-bright clarity. On either side of the avenue rose towering six-sided pylons of stone-hard dark rock, soaring two hundred feet into the gloom to support giant stone ceiling arches that looked like the ribs of an ancient sky giant statue.
Ren walked down the center of the avenue. Then, the gold-silver metal frame of the Speculum in his breast pocket grew warm against his ribs.
From the depths of the mirror, the fastidious, scholarly voice of Master Ren—the Arch-Archivist of the Fifth Tier—murmured directly into his thoughts.
Look at the stonework joints, young Ren, the Scroll-keeper noted, his unseen fingers tracing the invisible shape. No mortar. Zero clearance between ten-ton blocks. The stones were split using atom-deep glass-like ringing tones. This is not the stonework of the Grand Duchy. This is the First Epoch. The great realm that tried to harness the dying star before the First Cataclysm.
