The darkness that fell over Iron Crucible City after dusk was not the quiet curtain of night.
It was an oppressive, choking iron dome that sealed out the stars.
High atop the three-hundred-foot dark rock rim of the fiery volcano bowl, nine huge pylons forged from black meteoritic iron flared into evil, blood-red soft glow.
A dome of crackling spiritual force—the ancient Nine-Fold Iron Crucible Boundary Array—rushed across the sky. Its sharp-angled energy lattices locked together with a series of sonic booms that shook the city’s drainage sewers like an earthquake.
KABOOM. KABOOM. KABOOM.
Nine times the sky thundered.
When the final node locked, the air inside the volcano bowl grew stale, hot, and thin. The exhaust plumes from thirty blast furnaces, normally vented out through the mountain passes, were trapped within the basin. That turned the streets into a choking fog of sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide.
From the town watchtowers, bronze sound horns roared with emergency martial law declarations:
