The air beyond the broken overseer-core seam tasted of ozone, chilled liquid silver, and thirty thousand years of undisturbed incense.
Lin Tao stepped out of the shimmering distortion. His heavy hobnailed boots struck polished dark rock flat stone slabs that gleamed like wet black glass. Each step sent a faint sound echo rippling outward into a vaulted circular chamber whose ceiling was lost in a vast dome of revolving sky spheres. Suspended eighty paces above the floor, nested rings of solidified golden Dao-light rotated with silent, clockwork care. It cast long amber shadows across the expanse.
Beside him, Tie Shan stepped clear of the distortion, the fourteen-pound star-iron pry-bar resting easy across his broad right shoulder. The giant’s massive chest rose. Then he fell in deep, measured drafts, his scarred jaw set like a granite foundation. His left arm, tightly bound in coarse gray linen from their escape through the quarantine boundary, didn’t twitch. His dark eyes scanned the high vaulted gallery with the cold, calculating instinct of a seasoned quarry worker assessing a dangerous rockface.
“The air is stale,” Tie Shan said, surveying the vast hall.
“It hasn’t circulated through a physical air in ten thousand years,” Lin Tao replied quietly, his fingers resting near the brass clasp of his land-mapper satchel. “Everything here is kept by a backup life-support bus running on decaying Precursor turbines. Keep your footing solid, Tie Shan. The floor has been coated with low-friction diamond dust to prevent static-electric buildup.”
