The ozone smell thickened, copper and dry static coating Nimeth's tongue. Garran's dark irises pinned her where she stood. Coils of black fiber, still spitting pale sparks, twined around the stone pillars, framing an iron cage. Tannik's grip on her sleeve loosened, his knuckles trembling. “This is it,” Tannik muttered, flicking his gaze toward the sealed arch. “The entire world, held hostage for your peace of mind.” A muffled percussion cracked overhead, sifting pulverized slate onto Nimeth's hair. The basalt underfoot shuddered to an unnatural vibration. Tannik jerked his chin toward the ceiling. “Breachers.” The reinforced gateway shattered inward, sending chips of keystone and slag skittering across the floor. Through the rent, a figure dropped down a braided steel cable. Clad in the lacquered plate of the Ashen Tribunal, his shaved scalp caught the torchlight: High Inquisitor Kelvor. A dozen legionaries followed in strict silence, steel hooks bound across their bracers. The hooked iron was built for siphonage, meant to pull vitality straight through skin and marrow. “Nimeth of Zynir,” Kelvor said, his brass collar projecting the words across the vault. “Your sedition ends on this pavement.” Boots struck stone, crushing delicate floor reliefs. “And your pet weapon will be rendered down for the high courts.” Nimeth shifted between him and the steps. “He is a man, Kelvor. Not imperial fuel.” Kelvor stepped forward without pausing to argue. His serrated saber swept in a flat, whistling arc toward her collarbone. Steel hit sharpened aurichalcum with an ear-splitting shriek. Faelis drove herself between them, holding the sheared half of her consecrated halo like a garrote. She hooked the jagged circlet around the officer's sword-wrist. Kelvor bellowed. The notched gold bit through his vambrace into tendon, grinding against the radius. With a sharp twist of her hips, Faelis wrenched the ring. Flesh parted with an ugly tear. The severed hand fell, fingers locked stiff around the hilt, spilling black blood across the flagstones. Faelis kicked the dead blade away, chest heaving. “Touch her again,” Faelis said, her voice dead and flat, “and I take the other shoulder.” The inquisitor staggered back into his men, gripping his severed wrist as blood pumped between his fingers. A shrill, uncontrolled screech broke from his throat. That cry, sharp and shrill, reached the upper gallery. Garran leaned over the balustrade. The jet darkness in his pupils fractured into white-hot streaks. A guttural vibration rattled in his ribcage, shaking the dust from the balusters as the dark cords along the masonry discharged blinding arcs of white lightning. “Garran, no!” Nimeth cried, a desperate plea. The floor cracked open. Columns of black filament, wide as tree trunks, burst through the masonry. They ignored the Tribunal soldiers entirely, driving straight up into the vaulted ceiling, chewing through hundreds of cubits of solid shale like burrowing drills. They burrowed straight toward the open sky. Nimeth watched the filaments pulse. They were not merely breaking rock; they were drinking. Miles above, moored in the low clouds, drifted the sky-citadels that fed on the empire's captive millions. High overhead, the distant thrum of the cloud-anchors sputtered. The steady auroral glow of the floating capital flickered out, leaving only dead mass against the sky. The cords flared purple-black as they tapped the reservoirs above. The subterranean air grew heavy, thick with the groan of an empire's keystone engines giving up their hold on the clouds. Tannik dropped against a pillar, staring up into the fractures. “He unlatched the buoyancy rings. The whole city is dead weight.” The vault above groaned. A fissure zig-zagged between the arches, dropping chunks of slate the size of carts. A hollow, descending roar pressed down through the stone—the sound of million-ton foundations dropping out of the troposphere. Zynir, the floating capital, was coming down. And it was aiming straight for the Sunken Spire of Orazir.

The Falling City