The physical world outside the blue chalk circle was screaming.
Outside, eight 8-Star Grand Saint Domains were grinding against the earth-shaking bedrock of the Sacred Mountain like earth-shaking plates caught in a hyper-space-folding centrifuge. A three-mile ocean of molten white dark rock roared with fiery fury. It spat tongues of liquid fire twelve hundred feet into the blackened sky. Above, sixty thousand razor-thin spatial fissures spun in overlapping sharp-angled spirals. It tore the sky fabric into glowing filaments of ionic ozone. The air pressure alone was enough to crush a warship into a lead coin. The surrounding heat hovered at twelve thousand degrees.
Yet, along the outer rim of the ten-foot blue chalk line scribed by Frank’s stub of carpenter’s chalk, there was no sound at all. There was only a thin, semi-clear boundary of azure light. It hummed with the quiet, whisper-level hum of a well-ventilated clockwork room.
Inside the circle, the heat was a comfortable seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit. The air was fresh, cool, and carried a mild fragrance of toasted barley tea.
Frank stood in the center of the ring, his canvas camp chair bag slung neatly over his right shoulder. His wooden yardstick was tucked in the tool loop of his overalls, and his hands resting comfortably inside his deep front pockets. He looked up at the world-ending ceiling of white-hot magma and screaming space-folding guillotines that was cascading downward to wipe out him.
