The smell of glass-fused sand clung to the wool of Lin Ke’s cloak.
The crater atop the bluff was seven paces wide and four feet deep at its center. Its lip was lined with smooth, bubbled green glass. Quartz dust melted under thousands of current units of sudden, sky current.
At the bottom of the pit, there was no bone, no cloth, and no hair.
Only a thin layer of fine white ash, already being scattered across the rocky ridge by the cold river wind.
*
Behind him, thirty Foundation Peak students stood in the drizzle. Their faces were pale, their fists clenched tightly inside their wide sleeves.
Not one of them looked up at the sky.
They stared at the green glass crater with the sullen, helpless dread of cattle waiting outside a butcher shop.
