An impossibly deep gorge, its walls carved over millennia into thousands upon thousands of enormous seated figures — stone kings and queens from a lost civilization, stacked in tiered rows from the canyon floor to the cloud line far above. A river of torchlight snakes through the valley floor as a miles-long funeral procession bears a great sarcophagus on a wheeled platform drawn by dozens of black oxen. Shafts of pale moonlight break through the clouds overhead, illuminating random carved monarchs in eerie silver, while the rest remain in deep, velvety shadow. The scale is staggering, almost nauseating in its verticality, evoking the terror of deep time and the futility of mortal power.