Hephaestus looked at me. Recognition dawned in his good eye, followed immediately by a flash of shame.
"Elias," he murmured. "The Weaver. You... you helped me. You remember the weave. You remember the tension requirements."
"I remember," I said, stepping closer, ignoring the heat radiating off him. "I remember we designed a cage for infinite power. We told Zeus it was cruel, but we did it anyway."
"I had no choice!" Hephaestus roared, slamming his fist into the floor. The impact cracked the stone. "He had my anvil! He threatened to unmake the Forge! I built Pandora to save my work!"
"And now your work is killing her," I countered, pointing at Aria.
Thane turned, shifting Aria so the Smith could see clearly. She was conscious, barely. Her eyes were glazed, the amethyst dimming behind a film of pain. But it was her left side that drew the eye. The Silvering had consumed her entire left arm, her shoulder, and was creeping across her collarbone in jagged, geometric lines of mercury and chrome. It wasn't just skin anymore. It was a carapace. A statue emerging from the flesh.
Hephaestus stared at the silver lines. He crawled closer, compelled by the horror of his own creation gone wrong. He reached out a scarred hand, hovering inches from the creeping metal.
"The lattice is collapsing," he diagnosed, his voice dropping to a horrified whisper. "She’s trying to hold the frequency of four divine souls in a biological container that hasn't been tempered. The friction is transmuting the carbon in her cells into celestial star-metal."
"We know the diagnosis," Kaelen snapped, his patience evaporating. "We need the cure. Elias said the Primal Anvil can reforge her."
Hephaestus looked up at Kaelen, his expression stark. "The Anvil is not a hospital, Dragon. It is where raw ore is beaten into shape. It destroys the weakness to reveal the strength. To put a living mortal on that surface..."
"Is death," I finished for him.
"Worse," Hephaestus shook his head, his beard of wire swaying. "It is unmaking. She will feel every atom of her being pulled apart and reorganized. It is agony beyond the reach of nerves. It breaks the mind before it fixes the body."
Aria stirred in Thane’s arms. She pushed herself up, her movements jerky and stiff. She looked at Hephaestus, her eyes burning with that stubbornness I’d come to expect from her.
"I'm already breaking," she rasped, her voice sounding thin and metallic. "I can feel my lungs turning to crystal. I can feel my heart slowing down because the muscle is getting too hard to pump. If I stay like this... I die a statue, or the runes reach my heart and I explode first. Either way, I'd rather die screaming on an anvil if there's a chance I walk away."
Hephaestus studied her. He looked at the defiance in her jaw, the way her hand, the human one, gripped Thane’s armor so hard her knuckles were white.
"Pandora," the god whispered, a strange softness entering his tone. "She had that same fire. The defiant spark. I put it there to annoy Zeus."
He sighed, a long, rattling exhalation. He grabbed a piece of the shattered chain and used it to haul himself upright. His legs were twisted, the lead braces clanking loudly, but he stood. He was immense, easily seven feet tall, broad as a silo.
"The Anvil alone is not enough," Hephaestus stated, limping toward the center of the arena where the massive, glowing blockof iron sat. "The Anvil provides the resistance. The hammer provides the force. But we need fuel. We need heat sufficient to melt the soul-lattice so it can be stretched."
He turned to look at the four of us.
"The Bellows are powered by the Cyclops," he gestured to the battery in Brontes's chest. "That provides the base heat for the Forge. But forher? For a vessel containing the essence of the Phoenix, the Dragon, the Wolf, and the Bear?"
He shook his head.
"Regular fire isn't hot enough. Dragon fire isn't pure enough. We need the source."
"What source?" Flynn asked, eyeing the bubbling magma pits nervously.
"You," Hephaestus said, pointing a finger that looked like a burnt sausage at Kaelen. Then he pointed at me. At Flynn. At Thane.
"You poured yourselves into her," the Smith explained, his voice gaining strength, shifting into lecture mode. "You overfilled the cup. If we want to make the cup bigger, you have to be the fire that softens the clay. You must channel your essence, all of it, directly into the Anvil while she lies upon it."
"We are already bonded," I argued, my mind racing through the metaphysical implications. "We are already connected."
"Not like this," Hephaestus growled. "This isn't a passive link. This is active channeling. You have to push. You have to burn. You have to strip away your own protections and pour your divinity into the metal beneath her."
He looked at me directly, his good eye boring into mine.
"And you, Weaver. You have to guide it. You helped me design the lattice? Fine. Then you help me unpick the stitches. You have to hold the pattern in your mind while they provide the raw power. If you drop the thread? She scatters into dust."
The weight of it hit me. He was asking me to perform delicate surgery on a soul using a hammer and a supernova.
