The landing at Step 90,000 was as silent as the grave of an extinct star.
Eighteen miles above the mortal earth, suspended in the empty pocket of the cosmic void, the platform was paved with massive stone blocks of dense, rainbow-bright sky mother-of-pearl.
Towering ninety stories above Frank’s white hardhat were the huge twin leaves of the Heavenly Ascension Gate.
Forged from pure, crystal-hardened spatial law and banded with starlight-cooled astral iron, the portal had stood sealed since the dawn of the First Epoch, one hundred thousand years ago.
Seven huge sky chains—each link forged from cold-rolled astral steel thicker than a royal war galley—wrapped around the meeting stiles of the golden doors.
Where the chains met in the center of the threshold, hanging twelve feet above the platform, was a massive padlock.
It was four feet wide, cast from dull, tarnished First Epoch bronze. Then it covered in thousands of tiny, indecipherable runes of divine sealing.
The keyway was choked with ten thousand years of rusted blue-green rust, sky cobwebs, and dried astral grease.
