Dawn broke across the jagged spine of Mount Apex in waves of brilliant, molten amber.
High above the central plateau, suspended between two towering granite obelisks, the ancient land-wide World-Bell began to toll.
DONGGGGGGG.
The sound was not merely heard. It was felt in the marrow of every living bone.
It rang across four sovereign seas, eighty mountain ranges, and thirty-six mortal empires.
DONGGGGGGG.
Twenty-four strikes. Forty-eight strikes. Seventy-two strikes.
Eighty-one slow, huge tolls shook the heavens. Their sound frequencies traveled cleanly through the newly energized copper spark grid, rippling along the hardened steel rail lines, and anchoring deep into the harmonized earth-shaking fault lines below.
