Chapter 150 - THE DRAGON’S EYE AND THE SNARE

The basin was a perfect, twelve-foot ring of rough, uncarved black obsidian that sat deeply embedded within the twisting, centuries-old roots of a colossal, dead white oak tree. This tree had stood as a monument to the mountain's primitive architecture long before the first foundational brick of the Blackfang Fortress had been laid. The water gathered inside the dark perimeter did not ripple; it did not answer the violent pulling of the category-five unmaking storm that raged across the higher peaks. It was a liquid of unimaginable density—a deep, thick, midnight-blue fluid that looked exactly like a physical slice of the starless night sky caught and trapped in ancient stone.