The afternoon sunlight hit Lin Ke’s face like a warm, stinging slap.
After twenty-four hours inside the sterilized, ozone-choked gloom of Node 07, the natural mountain air of the Iron Rift felt thick and heavy with the scent of wild pine needles, crushed granite, and distant woodsmoke. Every step up the outside stone stairs sent a dull, throbbing ache streaming through his Ashen-Iron ribs. There, the burns beneath his healing bandages were slowly beginning to knit into thick, tough living scar tissue.
At his side, Meng Shan carried a heavy wooden staff, his stone skin flaking away in the breeze to reveal fresh, healthy pink flesh beneath.
As they reached the upper rim of the deep gap, the sound hit them. A churning, muttering roar of hundreds of voices, weapons clattering against shields, and the impatient whinny of horned spirit-beasts.
The entire southern ridge of the Iron Rift was choked with fighters.
Over forty regional clans and independent trading leagues had assembled along the canyon edge. Formation masters from the Five Peaks Pavilion, caravan guards from the Iron Carriage Guild, and sword-fighters from the Crimson Sand Sect stood in tense, bristling formations, their flying swords hovering overhead like clouds of iron hornets.
