The solidification of the Sea of Glass was not a mere physical change; it was a
rhythmic murder of motion. The Dawn-Seeker didn't just stop; it was seized. One
moment, the Living Silver hull was slicing through the turquoise waves of
silica; the next, the ocean became a crystalline vice. The shriek of iron plates
being crushed by the sudden expansion of the glass echoed through the ship like
the scream of a dying leviathan. We were no longer sailors; we were statues in a
frozen gallery of orange-tinted sunlight and parched, unmoving air.
I stood on the deck, my boots vibrating with the dying thrum of the coal
engines. The "Real" world's technology, which had been our pride and our
salvation, was currently choking on the impossibility of the West. Black smoke
from the chimneys didn't drift away; it hung in the air like a stagnant bruise,
unable to rise in the pressurized atmosphere of the Dust-Kingdom.
