The Ancient Boundary Pylon rose twenty paces into the dead sky, a massive needle of black star-iron half-buried in the trembling dark rock.
Unlike the rough, weathered shale around it, the pylon’s surface showed no signs of wind erosion or chemical decay. It was perfectly six-sided, each facet four feet wide, forged from a dense Precursor alloy that absorbed light like a bottomless pit.
Lin Tao approached the base of the monument. His boots stepped carefully across the shaking rock.
Beneath his soles, the ground felt almost hollow, as though the bedrock was merely a thin veneer of stone stretched over an empty void. Tie Shan followed three paces behind. His star-iron pry-bar was held at the ready, his eyes scanning the barren cliffs for any sign of royal patrol skiffs.
The pylon was not silent.
A deep, rhythmic thrum rang from within its star-iron core. A low, deep pulse that shook through the soles of their boots at exactly twenty-four cycles per second. Across the front facet of the obelisk, carved deep into the iron-hard metal, ran four upright columns of ancient Precursor glyphs.
They weren’t Daoist magic charms or spiritual sigils.
They were raw, plain building registers, cast in the angular, sharp-angled font of the First Age.
