The sound was sickening, like stepping on a thousand bones. Shards shifted under my weight, sliding and grinding; the edges were razor-sharp. They bit into the thick soles of my boots, scoring the leather.
I focused. I pushed my will into my feet, into the unstable ground.Solidify.
The earth magic struggled to find purchase on material that was essentially frozen nothingness, but I forced it. I mashed the shards together, creating flat, compressed footprints.
"Come," I ordered without looking back.
I heard Flynn move first, light and quick, dancing over the spots I had flattened. Then pure silence, which was probably Elias floating.
Then the heavy, rhythmic movement of Aria.
She stepped onto the glass. I heard a sharp intake of breath, not from pain, but from the vertigo of the shifting surface.
"Keep your eyes on my back," I said. "Do not look down."
We moved across the chasm. It was a nightmare of balance. The void-glass hummed with a low, dissonant frequency. Every movement sent cascades of black shards tumbling into the darkness below.
Halfway across, the flow of liquid light from the ceiling sputtered. An erratic pulse of energy shot through the solidified pile.
The bridge lurched.
Aria cried out.
I spun around.
She had slipped. Her good leg, the flesh one, had lost traction on a particularly slick piece of glass. She had fallen awkwardly, catching herself on her hands while her bad leg stuck out behind her at an angle that looked painful.
The impact against the razor-sharp glass should have flayed her skin to the bone.
Instead, there was a bright metallicping.
Aria propped herself up in the shards, breathing hard. She looked back at her leg. Her leather trousers were shredded, revealing the skin beneath.
It wasn't bleeding. It wasn't cut.
It was scratched, but in the same way metal scratches.
A jagged piece of black glass was pressed against her kneecap, unable to pierce the iron-grey surface of her transformation.
She stared at it, horror dawning in her eyes. She wasn't relieved that she wasn't hurt. She was terrified that shecouldn'tbe hurt.
"It didn't cut me," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Thane... it didn't cut me."
"Stand up," I said.
Kaelen started to move toward her, reaching out. "Aria?—"
"I said stand up," I repeated, my voice booming over the roar of the waterfall. I locked eyes with her. "We are in the middle of a collapse zone. Stop looking at it. Stand. Up."
She looked at me. The betrayal in her eyes was sharp, a distinct wound in my chest, but I walled it off. I shoved it down into the bedrock of my resolve. If I softened, if I let her dwell on the horror of her own body, she would freeze. And if she froze here, in the void entropy, we would lose her.
"Now, soldier," I barked.
She flinched. Her jaw tightened. The amethyst fire in her eyes flared, replacing the fear with anger. Good. Anger was fuel.
She grabbed a jagged spire of glass with her gray hand, using it as a crutch, and hauled herself to her feet. The sound of her joints grinding was audible.
"I'm up," she spat at me.
