The cold mountain wind sweeping through the Iron Dragon Gap smelled of damp slate, crushed pine needles, and sulfur.
Along the three-mile earthen terrace overlooking the Desolation of the Nine Pillars, ten thousand mortal craftsmen stood in quiet, disciplined formations. They were men whose palms were thick with the calluses of granite quarries, bronze foundries, and iron mines. Men who had spent their entire lives shaping the physical bones of the southern continent. Now, each man stood beside a burnished copper mirror mounted upon a low star-iron tripod. He waited for the master engineer’s check. Behind them, forty thousand support troops kept the supply lines running. He hauled carts of animal fat, dry fuel, and fresh well water.
Lin Tao walked the center comms trench, with Tie Shan and Master Zhang of the Azure Mirror Guild.
Every twenty paces, Lin Tao knelt to inspect the clockwork locking dogs on the mirror pivots. Each mirror was cast from high-purity red copper, alloyed with three percent tin to prevent rusting and hammered into a curved concavity against a steel master form. The sun caught the polished metal. Then, the glow was not a diffused glare. But a razor-sharp pencil of amber light capable of scorching dry grass at two hundred paces.
