Place · The Ancients’ arena in orbit
The Celestial Circle
“Up there, in orbit, where projections can burst without burning forests or sinking cities.”
The Circle is not in the ring of dust that circles Vesper; it is above it. From the platform, the ring passes below and behind like a broad bracelet of glittering dust. The point always stands straight above the Pillar, and the only way up is the Pillar itself: an instant of total white, with no up or down or sound, in which the body comes apart and puts itself back together like a projection.
The platform is round and enormous, about a hundred and twenty paces across, made of dark, smooth star obsidian, a black stone that keeps light inside it. It never warms in the Sun or freezes in the shade. Engraved in the floor are twelve concentric rings of symbols in Ancient, which glow faintly and which no one can read. It belongs to neither Sun nor Moon, but to the Ancients.
It is here that the Law of the Circle holds: duels between Weavers, with no fire in the forests below. On day 26 Teo and Nyra fight here at the middle of the sky, and the duel ends in the Overload.