He ignored me completely, his body rigid as a bowstring. He leaned forward, eyes wide, whispering to the empty air, to the void, to the monsters on the other side of the veil.
"Eiss... eiss thalorra..."
"Kaelen!" I shouted, shaking him hard enough that his head should have snapped back. Instead, he remained rigid as iron, his gaze locked on the swirling void where Flynn had vanished.
He didn't blink. He just kept chanting those terrible, liquid syllables, his voice vibrating with a resonance that rattled the teeth in my skull. "Eiss... thalorra..."
"He cannot hear you, Aria."
The unexpected voice made me jump, my heart kicking against my ribs. I spun to see Master Theron stumbling through the debris of the Sanctorum's entrance. The old archivist looked frail against the backdrop of the bleeding sky, his robes torn and covered in dust, but his eyes were sharp, fixed on Kaelen’s frozen form. He clutched the journal he’d given me to his chest like a shield.
"What is happening to him?" I demanded, my hands hovering over Kaelen’s shoulders, afraid to touch him again, afraid to freeze. "I tried to pull Flynn through, and?—"
"And Olympus noticed," Theron finished breathlessly, stepping over a fissure in the floor that leaked golden light. He didn’t look at me; he looked up, past the shattered dome, to the looming mass of Olympus pressing down on us. "The language he speaks... it is the Tongue of Creation. Or perhaps Unmaking. The journal warns of this."
"Warns of what? Speak plainly!"
"Drawing the attention of the gods, girl! Look at them!" Theron gestured wildly to the golden tethers pulsing between Kaelen, myself, and the Gate. "You are trying to act as a door, simply opening and closing to let them pass. But you are not a door." He fumbled with the journal, his gnarled fingerstrembling as he turned pages brittle with age. "Pandora’s final entry... I missed the nuance in the translation until I saw you standing in the light."
He thrust the book toward me. The ink seemed to writhe on the page.
"The prophecy does not say the daughter willopenthe Gate," Theron rasped, his voice cutting through the unnatural hum of the chamber. "It says she willbecomeit. The Four are not meant to be pulled through one by one like drops of water. They are the corners of the foundation. If you pull one without the others, the structure collapses. The Dragon Prince is freezing because of two things. One, you are siphoning his existence, his power, to anchor the Wolf Prince's passage."
I looked down at Kaelen, at the frost creeping toward his throat. He wasn't just cold; he was fading, his solidity wavering with every second Flynn hammered against the other side.
"And the other?"
"Your destruction or binding with the gate, turning it into a door, was one thing, but trying to open it and bring one of the princes through? That drew the attention of Olympus. Beings they have probably assumed were lost were suddenly there, or at least they became aware of them. Power like theirs wouldn't go unnoticed. And trying to use the Dragon Prince's power to bring the Wolf Prince though, even if it was unintentional, has alerted them to something going on."
The ice that was covering Kaelen suddenly felt like it was spreading through my own chest.
It hadn't just been stirring as I had previously thought. "Olympus is watching."
"Indeed, Aria, indeed. And what are they going to do when they realize that they can enter this world?"
TWO
Aria
The weight of the sky pressed down on us, heavy and smelling of iron and ozone. It wasn’t just atmosphere anymore; it was a presence, a colossal, unblinking awareness that bore down on the shattered Sanctorum like a thumb crushing an ant. The air grew thick, viscous with power that didn't belong in the mortal realm, making every breath a battle against a crushing invisible tide.
"They can enter?" I choked out, the words tasting like copper and ash. "You mean the Olympians?"
Master Theron didn’t answer immediately. He was too busy staring at the swirling aurora above, his face as pale as the parchment he was clutching. His eyes, usually magnified by spectacles and filled with scholarly curiosity, were now wide with an animalistic terror I had never seen in him. The golden light of Olympus bled through the cracks in reality, staining the ancient stone floor with hues of violet and dangerous, radioactive amber. It was beautiful in the way a forest fire is beautiful, right before it consumes you.
Kaelen convulsed in my arms, a violent shudder that rattled his bones against mine. His body radiated a cold so profoundit burned my skin through my tunic, a dry ice freeze that threatened to brittle my own ribs. The frost on his jaw cracked with a sickening sound as his mouth continued to shape those terrible, liquid sounds, a language dead for eons. "Eiss... thalorra..."
"Stop it," I hissed, panic clawing at my throat. I pressed my forehead against his, ignoring the bite of ice that seared my skin. "Come back to me. Kaelen, that is a direct order from your Keeper."
It was a pathetic attempt at humor, a desperate callback to our old dynamic of command and defiance, but he didn't twitch. The golden tether connecting his chest to the Gate pulsed with a sickly, reversed rhythm. I wasn't just anchoring him; I was draining him. In my arrogant attempt to be the door for Flynn, to force a second opening before the first was stable, I had cannibalized the dragon to feed the wolf.
I grabbed his face between my hands, my fingers numb against his frozen skin. "Theron, how do I reverse it? How do I stop the siphoning?"
"You must stabilize the foundation!" Theron shouted over the rising hum of the Gate, his voice cracking. He wasn't looking at his books now; he was looking at the destruction of his world. "You are the center point, Aria! You are the axis! Stop pulling! You mustbe!"
Stop pulling.
It sounded simple, but the hunger in my blood was a roaring river, a torrent of desire and magic that had escaped my control. I wanted Flynn here. I wanted the smell of rain and musk, I wanted his amber eyes watching my back. I wanted them all here. My soul felt stretched thin, four corners of a map trying to curl inward, ripping at the seams. I had to stop reaching for what was missing and pour everything I had into what was present.
