The Stygian Basin opened before them like the cut throat of a dead titan.
The cave was vast beyond human measure, stretching three miles from dark rock wall to dark rock wall, its vaulted ceiling soaring so high into the darkness that the stone was entirely obscured by roiling banks of violet steam and bitter sulfur mist. In the exact center of the basin, the black, sluggish waters of the Styx-Khorat came together from four blood canals. It formed a huge horseshoe clouded eye that plunged four thousand feet into a deep-sea canyon glowing with the dull, blood-red soft glow of the world-size mantle far below.
The roar of the falling water was not merely loud. It was earth-shaking. It shook through the marrow of Ren’s quartz-infused bones, rattling his teeth and threatening to loosen the stabilizing resin-splints along his left collar bone. Every pulse of the clouded eye sent a shudder through his ribs, reminding him of the brittle fragility of his skeleton.
Suspended directly over the boiling heart of that roaring clouded eye hung the Scales of Khorat.
It was a titanic clockwork balance forged during the First Epoch. Just then, the master builders of the First High court still commanded the shape of star-iron and stone-hard stone. The central balance beam, ninety paces in length and thirty paces thick, was carved from a single seamless block of black dark rock, pivoted upon a huge pivot point needle of polished star-iron rooted deep into the dark rock bedrock…
