The bells of the High Court had been tracking the light for eleven days.
They were the oldest bells in the known world. Each was cast from a different alloy: gold for Justice, iron for Order, copper for Memory. They had rung every dawn and dusk since the Court's founding, an unbroken chain of sound stretching across two thousand years of Korthane history.
On the twelfth morning, the bells went quiet before the third toll.
They did not crack. They did not shatter. The sound simply died, absorbed by something outside the ordinary laws of acoustics. The acolytes exchanged glances. The senior priests looked toward the High Seat.
The Arbiter sat motionless above them all, his ancient eyes fixed on the western horizon visible through the great open archway of the Court's receiving hall.
