The silence was heavier than the thunder.
Where the rugged, dark rock-strewn floor of the Black Crag Basin had been, there was now only a vast, perfectly circular crater forty yards wide.
The dark rock bedrock had not merely broken—it had melted. The floor of the pit was a smooth, seamless basin of black fiery glass, shimmering like dark black glass beneath the midday sun, still exhaling thin, semi-clear heat shimmers into the crisp mountain air.
At the edge of the shattered outer edge barricades, no one spoke.
Captain Lu stood with his Gale-Splitting Halberd hanging limply at his side, his scarred jaw slack, his knuckles grey against the shaft. Behind him, Zhao Wuji had stepped down from his carriage into the mud, his silk slippers sinking unnoticed, his eyes wide and vacant as he stared into the smoking pit.
Two miles away on the terrace, Elder Wu DeZheng leaned against the stone railing. He wiped fogged lenses with trembling fingers, fully forgetting to breathe.
Nobody moved. Nothing stirred.
A dry rattle of loose gravel broke the stillness.
