The mammoth ivory awl bit four inches into the black gold-silver metal arbor.
For a single, frozen heartbeat, nothing moved. The universe seemed to hold its breath as the silver-wound metal ring touched the clockwork heart of the Great Paradox Spindle.
Then, the law of cause and effect demanded its payment.
The reverse torque of six thousand turns a minute didn’t fade. It hit the unmoving careful debt claim of the Conservator’s Injunction like a speeding locomotive striking a mountain of solid lead.
CRACK-BOOM!
The sound was not metal. It was the sound of a glacier splitting from surface to bedrock.
A blinding spiderweb of white-hot, blazing bright fissures tore down the thirty-foot length of the monolith. The fluted black gold-silver metal column didn’t warp or dent. The crystal-hardened time ash integrated into its core lattice underwent total load-bearing phase inversion.
The Great Paradox Spindle simply ceased to be solid.
