The pressure from the three-mile golden eye didn’t crush matter. It interrogated it.
Every grain of dark rock dust on the dais began to vibrate at a uniform, rigid hum.
Lin Ke felt the tiny iron grains in his Ashen Marrow hum in sympathy, pulled toward the sky by an irresistible, algorithmic magnetism.
Beside him, Elder Wu had fully ceased all office pushback.
The old man lay curled into a fetal ball beneath a Precursor stone slab, his fingers jammed into his ears, muttering fragments of old family repentance prayers through chattering teeth.
“Magistrate Kui...” Wu whimpered, his voice barely heard over the high-pitched ringing whine filling the air. “The Grand Inquisitor of the Seventh Circuit... He purged the Heavenly Crane Sect in the Fourth Dynasty. Ninety thousand students... Erased from the karmic registries in a single afternoon. Not even their ghosts were allowed to reincarnate...”
“Quiet, Wu,” Lin Ke said.
Lin Ke stood in the center of the dais, his feet anchored to the stone.
