Over the last hill the grass simply ends, as if at a shoreline, and beyond it lies a plain where a city ought to be. It is pale and smooth as river ice, and cracked like river ice, and even under this grey sky it holds a faint shine. Lay a hand on it and it is warm. The river still crosses it, slow and unhurried, between the stumps of bridges that rise out of the water and stop in the air. The broken shaft of one bell tower still stands. Nothing grows on the fused stone. Ravens turn overhead. Footsteps ring here, voices carry too far, and travellers who meant to speak find that they have stopped.
This was Arkenfall, the city that no longer flooded, all bridges and bell towers and terraced docks. There was no fire. At dusk on an ordinary day every stone in it sounded one note, and the note broke.
The place
Arkenfall was a crowded, prosperous river city of the Age of Bright Works. Its river had once flooded every spring, until a singing weir upstream held the floods back and keepers tuned the city's bells to carry the weir's note through the streets. Today only the white plain remains, and it can still be visited.
What is told
Somewhere in the city, someone built a resonance work from a stolen design, copied so often that no one left knew why it was shaped as it was. At dusk every bell in Arkenfall began to ring unstruck. The weir answered, then the bridges, and for one long breath every stone sounded the same note, so pure that watchers on the hills wept. Then the note broke. Many accounts agree that the next morning the Aethyr Envoys stood in a line at the edge of the plain and did not speak for a long time. Each read it differently. Vaelra saw dangerous knowledge as a weapon already in an unseen hand, the seed of the Crown of Ash and its registries. Serathiel concluded that the Aethyr themselves had become the disaster and should go home. Lysara kept healing, and grew careful about what she taught. Who stole the design, and whether it was an attack, an experiment or an accident, is still unknown. Crown histories call Arkenfall proof that the Crown is needed, and anyone who wants knowledge to travel freely must answer for it first.