Midnight on the high terrace of the Central Peak was freezing, clear, and pregnant with the silent, choking dread of an approaching apocalypse.
The southern mountain valleys lay dark beneath a moonless sky, the vast forests of ancient pine swaying in the freezing alpine wind like a black, tossing ocean. Far below, the lanterns of the outer sect watchtowers flickered like dying fireflies, fully clueless to the sky machinery grinding in the heavens above.
Lin Tao stood at the granite stone railing, his dark wool cloak pulled tight against the sub-zero gale.
Beside him, Tie Shan stood like an unmoving bronze guard, his twelve-pound pry-bar planted firmly between his iron-toed boots, his eyes scanning the starry horizon with the quiet, gut caution of a hunted wolf.
“Air is stopping,” Tie Shan murmured, his breath catching in his throat.
“Brace your mind, Tie Shan,” Lin Tao said, his voice flat, level, and ice-cold. “Don’t look directly into the focal node. Count your heartbeats.”
At exactly three minutes past midnight, the world broke.
It wasn’t a gradual slowing. It was an instant, total execution halt.
