The southern horizon above the liberated basin didn’t burn with the familiar gold of sunrise or the crimson embers of dusk.
It glowed with an unnatural, sickly violet soft glow that bled upward through the cloud cover like spilled ink across wet parchment. Standing at the wind-scoured rim of the Stygian Deep gap, south of Mount Taiyi and the jagged teeth of the Continental Rift, Lin Tao felt the cold underground updraft pull at the edges of his charcoal traveling cloak. The air rising from the depths was not merely cold. It was chemically devoid of living heat. He smelled sharply of wet slate, powdered bone, and spark-charged copper filings.
Beside him, Tie Shan knelt on one knee upon the frosted granite, his massive hands step by step testing the forged star-iron carabiners linking their descent hawsers.
Across the giant’s broad back rested his fourteen-pound cold-drawn iron pry-bar, newly banded with star-white-gold sleeves that glinted dully under the pale sky. His left shoulder, carefully rehabilitated over the long weeks following their battle beneath the rift, moved with fluid, heavy, slow power. Yet Tie Shan’s dark eyes remained fixed on the unnatural violet light pulsing across the northern heavens.
Lin Tao raised his left hand, tapping his temple to focus his test sight array.
