The whiteout struck the basin at midnight with the physical force of a collapsed wall.
Driven by seventy-knot glacial gales, the blizzard swallowed the black basalt cliffs, reducing visibility to less than five paces. The snow did not drift down softly; it tore through the air horizontally, needle-sharp and freezing, coating the dark iron plates of the Citadel in a thick, crystalline crust that reflected the ghostly, purple-green discharge from the overhead induction coils.
Elara knelt behind a shattered granite outcropping fifty yards from the Citadel's lower gates. Her wolf-fur coat was weighed down by ice, her eyelashes rimmed with frost, but her silver-grey eyes remained fixed on the twin six-inch brass barrels protruding from the fortress's lower masonry slits.
