The light from above was beautiful, but below their boots, reality was falling into the dark.
On the outer edge of the Root Stone base, three thousand tiny amber nodes began flickering and extinguishing one after another.
“The lower planes,” Lin Ke whispered, struggling to stand.
His knees trembled with tiredness, his Ashen Iron skeleton aching in every joint. But his bloodshot eyes locked onto the dying amber lights.
“What’s happening to them?” Shen Yue asked, rushing to his side, steadying his braced left elbow with careful, ink-stained fingers.
“During the great schism,” Lin Ke croaked, his voice thick with gravel and dried blood, “when the ancient courts barricaded themselves in the Upper Vaults, they cut the outer spiritual water chutes. They treated the three thousand mortal realms as disposable melted rock waste pools.”
He pointed to a cracked white-gold bus trace along the outer rim of the end-post casing.
“Now that the new fire core is taking hold, the old family anchor points have dissolved. If we don’t bind the lower realms into a mutual ringing web before the compile cycle completes, the links will snap forever. Three thousand mortal worlds... Drifting into the dark void like cut barges.”
