The Great Gates of the Root Citadel towered twenty paces into the freezing twilight of the Upper Heavens.
Forged from solid slabs of star-white-gold and banded with ribbons of milky Precursor jadeite, the titanic portals were three paces thick, designed to withstand ground-shaking upheavals and sky cataclysms alike. Across their polished surfaces ran thousands of etched micro-grooves. It glowed with a steady, pulsating emerald light that lit up the terrace in an eerie, unearthly hue.
In the center of the archway, where the two massive leaves met, was the Root Lock.
It wasn’t a traditional clockwork keyway. It was a massive, circular test screen forged from ancient bronze and pure-crystal silicon, covered in rotating nested rings of ancient Precursor glyphs.
Behind these doors lay the Inner Kernel Space—the total office core of the Celestial Citadel.
Lin Tao stood three paces from the bronze screen, his boots planted firmly in the frost.
His linen coat was stiff with ice and stained with sweat, mud, and dried blood. His cracked fourth rib throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache that matched the beat of his heart. The skin across his bandaged left palm burned with the antiseptic sting of bitter pine-resin animal fat.
