The explosion was not fire. It was mathematics breaking free of its constraints.
In the Upper Heavens, high above the Cloud Ridge of the Celestial Bastion, the thirty-meter black glass sphere that had contained the Cosmic Sandbox suddenly stopped humming. The eight giant stone cold-iron chains anchoring it to the courtyard snapped taut, groaning under a huge, supernatural pressure.
Standing on the mid-air bridge, Tie Shan paused. His twenty-one-ton star-iron totem was held across his chest. Around him lay the scattered bronze armor and shattered axe-spears of fifteen sky wardens.
Across the shattered mid-air bridge in the Upper Heavens, the sound of the explosion rolled across the cloud terraces like the roar of a dying dragon.
The thirty-meter black glass sphere that had stood as the unbending symbol of royal quarantine for ten thousand years was gone. In its place hung a jagged, glowing tear in the fabric of the skybox. A forty-meter fracture that burned with the cold, brilliant azure of raw Precursor bus lines.
Chunks of crystal-clear black glass rain fell from the sky, clattering against the marble terraces like hail.
Tie Shan looked up at the black glass sphere, his dark eyes widening.
A single hairline crack of blinding, pure golden light appeared on the southern equator of the black sphere.
