It was. Her heart was struggling to push blood through veins that were hardening.
"Why?" Kaelen crouched beside us in the cramped space, his large frame filling the shelter. He looked helpless, a king with no army to command against this enemy. "We healed her. We fed her. We did everything right."
"We are too much," I said sadly. "We forgot the basic law of the cosmos, brother. Mortal clay cannot hold divine fire forever. The kiln eventually cracks."
Outside, the screeching intensified. The stone shelter shuddered as heavy bodies slammed against it. Claws scraped over the rock, seeking purchase.
"They smell the change," Flynn’s voice came from outside the dome. "They smell the magic leaking out of her. It’s driving them into a frenzy!"
"We have to leave," Kaelen said, looking at the cracks forming in Thane’s barrier. "We have to get her to... somewhere. Is there a cure?"
"There is no cure for becoming a god," I said. "This is apotheosis without the immortality. It is a one-way transmutation."
"Stop talking like a textbook and fix her!" Kaelen snarled, grabbing the front of my robes.
"I am trying to see!" I snapped back, shoving him away. "The future is chaos, Kaelen! Every thread I pull snaps in my hands!"
I looked down at her. The silver had reached her cheek. Her breathing was shallow, hitching.
"The seed," Aria whispered.
Her hand, the one clutching the pomegranate seed, was clenched tight. The knuckles were rigid, stark white.
"The Titan's heart," she rasped. "Maybe we should... open it."
"Aria, no," I said, realizing what she was suggesting. "That seed is not an option. It wakes the mountain. It destroys the High Seat. If you use it here and now, the energy release will vaporize you in this state."
"I'm... breaking anyway," she murmured with a strained voice. Her eyes found mine, milky and terrifying, but the spirit behind them was still fierce. Stillher. "If I'm going to shatter... I want to take the roof off."
The stone above us cracked. A harpy’s talon punched through, dripping black ichor onto Kaelen’s shoulder. He barely flinched, burning the fluid away with a thought.
"The dome is failing!" Thane shouted from outside. "I cannot hold the weight!"
We were trapped. A dying girl, a broken plan, and a legion of monsters sharpening their beaks on our tomb.
I looked at the seed, or rather, the heart, in her hand. It pulsed with a deep red light, a heartbeat of the earth.
There was a theory. A desperate, unproven theorem from the Second Age.
Resonance damping.
If the friction was caused by four discordant divine frequencies vibrating her apart then perhaps adding a fifth, massive frequency, a bass note so deep it swallowed the treble, would stabilize the wave.
Or it would shake us all to dust.
"Kaelen," I said, my voice steady. "We cannot stop the transformation. But we might be able to stall it."
"How?"
"The Titan," I said. "It is earth. It is the original vessel. If she connects to the deep root, if she grounds the excess energy into the mountain itself..."
"She wakes the Titan," Kaelen said. "She destroys Olympus."
"She survives," I countered.
Kaelen looked at her. He looked at the silver creeping toward her eyes.
"Do it," he said.
