The floating stairs did not sway beneath their boots, but stepping onto them felt like treading upon water suspended in empty air.
Each black obsidian slab hung three cubits above the last, perfectly level, anchored by unseen ley-currents humming through the sheer face of the Jade Palisade. Below, the black volcanic beach dwindled to a narrow ribbon of coal-dust, and the Black Leviathan riding in the deep channel looked like an intricately carved beetle floating upon a plate of dark sapphire.
Malakor walked half a pace behind Aurelia, his left hand resting flat against the small of her back, his touch heavy and grounding.
His amber eyes never stopped roving. He watched the sheer face of white stone, the weeping copper-leafed willows clinging to the precipice, and the two attendants gliding silently ahead of them.
"They walk too quietly," Malakor murmured under his breath, his lips barely moving as he spoke against the rushing coastal draft. "People who don't make sound when they walk are either assassins, ghosts, or cowards who run when the steel comes out."
"They are immortals, Malakor," Aurelia replied softly, though she didn't pull away from his hand. She leaned subtly into the heat radiating from his palm, drawing upon his bottomless, dark stability to counteract the strange, dizzying lift of the altitude. "They have watched the ocean rot and mend from these heights for a thousand years."
"They can watch from the clouds all they like," he rasped, his thumb digging with possessive pressure through her leather tunic to graze the soft curve of her waist. "If that woman with the silver eyes tries to take a blade to your skin in this 'First Forge,' I'll carve her from collar to navel before her feet touch the ground."
Aurelia’s lips twitched with a faint, dangerous amusement. "You would fight an immortal court on their own threshold?"
"I'd fight the heavens themselves if they tried to peel those shards out of your chest," he growled, the raw, unvarnished truth in his voice sending a delicious, molten shiver straight through her core. "You bled for that crown. It stays where it was forged."
Ahead of them, Saphira halted upon the sixty-fourth step.
The obsidian staircase terminated at the threshold of a cyclopean archway carved directly into the white jade cliff. The opening was eighty feet high, framed by pillars shaped like coiled dragons with scales of pale amethyst.
Beyond the archway lay no dark cavern or damp tunnel.
A blinding, breathtaking panorama opened before them.
Spanning across an enormous highland basin surrounded by snow-capped peaks of translucent green stone lay the White City of Shen-Zhul.
It was a metropolis built not of timber or brick, but of carved jade, milky quartz, and silver-chased alabaster. Slender spires rose like needles toward the cloudless sky, connected by delicate, arched bridges made of solid glass. Thousands of floating barges, propelled by large, rotating sails of spun silk, drifted between the terraces, carrying fruit, crystal urns of spring water, and citizens clad in the shimmering robes of the Pale Lotus.
At the very center of the city stood the First Forge—a colossal, stepped ziggurat of black star metal, its summit crowned by a continuous, towering column of pale golden fire that reached straight into the stratosphere.
"Welcome to Shen-Zhul," Saphira said, stepping aside to let them view the expanse. "The Last Haven of the First Dynasty."
Theron, who had been carried up the stairs on the shoulders of two Vanguard marines, let out a choked, weeping sob, falling to his knees upon the jade threshold, clutching his cane to his chest. "The Cradle of the Sun... it survived. The cataclysm never reached this valley."
"It reached us," Saphira corrected, her silver eyes turning grave. "It reached us in the marrow of our bloodline. Look upon our people, archivist."
Aurelia looked down upon the sweeping terraces.
Though the city was breathtaking and serene, an eerie, unnatural quiet hung over the alabaster avenues. There were no children playing in the courtyards; no laughter echoed from the open markets. The people walked with slow, deliberate grace, but their faces were masks of ancient, hollow sorrow.
"We do not age," Saphira whispered. "We do not wither. But since the Seventh Shard was severed and carried into the western mists by the traitor Typhon, no child has been born within these walls. Our hearths are cold. Our bloodline is stagnant glass."
She turned her pupilless gaze squarely upon the Seven Shards glowing at Aurelia's throat.
"You brought the flame back, Empress," Saphira said, dropping to one knee upon the jade threshold, her two attendants bowing low beside her. "Now, the High Patriarch will decide whether you are our savior... or the executioner of our final dawn."