The sound of the Vanguard’s bronze war horns rolled across the bay like thunder striking iron, answered immediately by the chiming bells of the Jade Palisade.
Ninety-two warships moved in triple echelon through the harbor mouth, their hulls gleaming with fresh star metal and jade plating that repelled the sea spray in dancing arcs of luminescence. At the center of the formation sailed the refitted Black Leviathan, its dragon-iron paddle-wheels now reinforced with runic gears forged in the First Forge, churning the water with twice the speed and half the sound.
Aboard the flagship, forty Keepers of the Pale Lotus stood stationed along the gunwales, led by Saphira.
Their long staves of white wood were grounded into brass sockets welded to the deck, their amethyst orbs humming in synchronized resonance. As the armada cleared the outer reef, a dome of shimmering, violet-hued aether expanded above the fleet, shielding the timber and rigging from the violent, unrefined currents of the deep ocean.
Aurelia stood upon the command bridge, the ancestral blade resting across her knees, her eyes fixed on the horizon where the open sea lost its vibrant sapphire hue.
Ten leagues past the Glass Shoals, the sky changed.
The pale blue of the eastern heaven died, swallowed by a towering wall of churning, purple-black tempest clouds that stretched from the ocean floor to the upper stratosphere: the remnants of the Void-Curtain.
Though the ancient barrier had cracked when the Seventh Shard joined the crown, its death throes were a maelstrom of raw, untamed astral storms. Funnels of black void-wind sixty fathoms high danced across the water, tearing up geysers of boiling brine that froze into jagged needles of black ice before hitting the sea.
"Look at the compass," Malakor growled, stepping up beside the bronze binnacle.
The brass instrument’s needle was spinning in frantic, chaotic revolutions, completely severed from any magnetic north.
Malakor was clad in his newly tempered suit of star metal-reinforced plate, the matte-black metal absorbing the daylight like a sinkhole, his great sword sheathed diagonally across his back. His eyes were bright, tracking the erratic lightning dancing along the edge of the storm front.
"The needles are blind," Aurelia said, rising from the bench.
She walked to the front of the bridge, stepping out from beneath the protective canopy of the command deck into the biting, ionized wind blowing from the tempest. She reached up with her right hand, her fingertips touching the midnight torque circling her throat.
"The compass is blind because it looks for iron in the dirt," she whispered. "We are steering by the bone of the world."
Closing her eyes, Aurelia channeled the Eighth Relic—the Primordial Vessel.
The torque flared with a pulse of pure, liquid shadow that rippled through her veins, extending outward from her hands in a beam of concentrated silver-violet starlight. The beam pierced the swirling wall of the Void-Curtain, burning a stable, three-mile-wide tunnel of calm water through the heart of the howling tempest.
Within the tunnel, the boiling water smoothed into a glassy highway, the lightning arcing harmlessly along the perimeter of the channeled aether.
"Full ahead on the paddle-wheels!" Lady Vespera’s command rang down through the brass speaking-tubes. "Follow the Empress’s beam! Maintain column distance!"
The armada surged into the breach.
The sensation of crossing the threshold was a physical shock. The air grew dense and heavy, smelling of ozone, burning iron, and ancient, stagnant salt. The light of the sun vanished, replaced by an eternal twilight illuminated only by the faint, eerie glow of a crimson moon hanging low on the eastern horizon.
Malakor moved up behind Aurelia, his heavy gloved hand resting flat against the small of her back, his presence an unyielding anchor against the disorienting pull of the void-currents.
"You're holding the storm open with your bare will, Aurelia," he murmured, his breath hot against the shell of her ear. "Don't burn yourself out before the shooting starts."
"The ring feeds on the storm, Malakor," she answered, her lips parting in a breathless, exhilarated smile as she felt the chaotic tempest-energy passing through the torque, refined into pure, harmless power that washed through her marrow. "It doesn't drain me. It strengthens me."
"Good," Malakor rasped, his hand sliding around to grip her waist, pulling her back against the solid plate of his chest as they watched the black clouds part ahead of them.
Through the clearing mist, the first landmark of the Shattered Expanse appeared.
It was an island of sheer, blood-red volcanic rock, crowned by a fortress of jagged black iron that bristled with dozens of heavy steam-mortars. Floating above the red battlements was a massive banner of black silk, bearing the sigil of an eclipsed sun flanked by two weeping iron skulls.
The border-redoubt of the Eclipse Dynasty.
And resting in the bay beneath the fortress guns lay three colossal ironclads, steam venting from their armored funnels in rhythmic, terrifying plumes of white smoke.
Malakor’s lips curled into a predatory sneer as he drew his great sword, the dark steel singing into the gloom.
"Welcome to the new world, empress," Malakor whispered, the black shadow-flame bursting along his blade. "Let's go say hello to the neighbors."