Aria
Going inside the bronze structure was like walking into a wall of humid, metallic air that smelled of singed hair and bubbling grease. It wasn't the clean, sterile heat of Kaelen’s dragon fire; this was the dirty, industrial sweat of a machine that never sleeps.
We stumbled into the shadows of what looked like an overflow foundry, a massive, cavernous room filled with cooling vats of liquid bronze and piles of discarded gears the size of carriage wheels. The sounds of the dying city were muffled here, replaced by the low, rhythmic thrumming of underground bellows.
I leaned against a stack of copper sheets, my breath hitching in my chest. My legs felt as though they were partially numb, heavy and unresponsive, with a grinding in the sockets with every step. The gray patches on my skin, the Silvering, felt cold, like I was touching ice instead of my own body.
"Sit," Kaelen ordered, kicking a crate toward me. His face was streaked with soot, his golden eyes burning with a terrified intensity that he was barely keeping in check. "We catch our breath. Then we find the main Forge."
I sank onto the crate, grateful for the respite. Flynn was pacing the perimeter, daggers drawn, checking the shadows. Thane stood by the heavy doors we’d just breached, his massive back a solid wall against whatever might follow us.
"Let me see," Elias said, dropping to his knees in front of me.
He didn't ask permission. He took my arm, his long, cool fingers pushing back my tattered sleeve. I didn't even remember when it had ripped.
I looked down, expecting to see the static, frozen marks of gold that had marked me since I started listening to the princes while they were still in the gate.
I gasped.
They were moving.
The intricate, glowing patterns on my skin weren't fixed anymore, and they weren't just gold either. They were squirming. Lines of gold and mercury shifted beneath the translucent gray surface of my skin, coiling and uncoiling like nests of restless vipers. It felt maddening. A deep itch I couldn't scratch, a slithering sensation that made my stomach turn.
"They're loose," I whispered, horror rising in my throat. "The marks, they're crawling."
"Hold still," Elias murmured, his face inches from my forearm. His turquoise eyes narrowed, tracking the movement of a particularly bright line of gold as it slowly inched wound its way around my wrist.
"Is that normal?" Flynn asked, pausing his pacing to peer over Kaelen’s shoulder.
"Nothing about this is normal, Wolf," Kaelen snapped, but he didn't look away from my arm. He looked ready to cut the arm off if it would save me.
Elias traced the path of the moving light with a hovering finger. "It isn't random. Look at the geometry. Sharp angles.Intersecting paths." He looked up at me, his expression a mix of awe and dread. "It’s syntax."
"Syntax?" I asked, watching a silver line chase a gold one up toward my elbow. "You mean it's writing?"
"It's a runic script," Elias corrected. "The Silvering, it isn't just changing you. It’s analyzing you. It’s trying to solve the equation of your existence."
"Explain," Kaelen demanded, his hand finding my shoulder, his grip tight.
"She is a vessel," Elias said, his voice speeding up, the scholar taking over. "A vessel designed to hold immense power. But the vessel is cracking. The magic we poured into her, the binding, the Titan’s heart, the sheer volume of divine essence, it needs somewhere to go. It’s trying to map a path."
He grabbed my other hand, checking the markings there. They were doing the same thing, creeping upward, inward.
"Where are they going?" Thane asked from the door, his deep voice echoing in the metal room. "They seem directional."
Elias went pale. He released my hands and sat back on his heels, looking at my chest.
"The heart," Elias whispered.
I looked down. He was right. The writhing lines on my arms, my legs, anywhere I could see, they were all flowing in one direction. Inward. Toward the center of my chest. Toward the place where the bond hummed, where the Titan’s seed lay dormant in my pocket, where my own mortal heart was beating a frantic rhythm against ribs that felt too brittle to hold it.
"They are converging," Elias said. "It’s a pressure gauge, Aria. And a fuse."
"A fuse for what?" I asked, though I already had a pretty good guess.
"Critical mass," Elias said. "The design, Pandora’s design, it was meant to hold us as a last resort. But you aren't just holdingus. You are holding the unstable energy of the Titan's heart. If those runes meet atyourheart before the body is reinforced..."
"I die," I finished flatly.
