As soon as Aria's hands touched the Anvil, the connection between us erupted into noise. It wasn't the noise of the Forge, not the bellows, not the hammer, not the roar of the Titan beneath the floor. It was the sound of Aria herself.
The connection opened like a floodgate, and I didn't just feel her pain; I drowned in it. It was a scream that didn't use lungs. It was the screech of a soul being stretched on a rack, the sound of atoms violently divorcing one another to make room for something denser.
My amber eyes blew wide, pupils dilating until the red-lit cavern turned into a blur of motion and heat.
KEEP. HER. BEATING.
The command wasn't Hera’s. It wasn't Kaelen’s. It was mine, and it may as well have been etched into the marrow of my bones.
I stood at the western point of the circle, my boots vibrating against the stone. I shoved my hands toward the Anvil, not touching it, but pushing my essence into the space where she lay. I poured the hunt into her. I poured the adrenaline of the chase,the rhythm of lungs pumping air, the chaotic, beautiful friction of life refusing to stop.
She arched off the slab. Her back bowed, her spine popping audibly as the energy hit her.
Her skin... gods.
The silvering wasn't creeping anymore. It was reacting. Under the assault of Kaelen’s fire and Thane’s gravity, the metal skin turned liquid. It rippled like mercury, boiling and frothing, trying to consume her human side in a panic.
"Hold her!" Hephaestus roared, his voice a grinder of rocks. He swung a hammer the size of a tombstone.CLANG.
He hit her.
He actually hit her.
He struck her left shoulder, right on the silver joint. Sparks flew. Not orange sparks, but white, blinding chips of star-metal.
Aria didn't scream. She gagged, her body seizing, but Elias held the pattern. I felt the Weaver’s mind clamp down, a geometric cage forcing the energy to endure the blow rather than dissipate.
I snarled, baring my teeth, my claws punching through the leather of my gloves. Every strike of that hammer felt like it was cracking my own ribs.
More,I projected, feeding her the frantic drumbeat of my own heart.Don't you dare stop, Pup. Consider this an endurance run. Run with me.
She was with me. I could feel her terror, cold and sharp, but beneath it was that stubborn, iron-willed core that I wanted to sink my teeth into.
Then, the smell hit me.
It cut through the scent of ozone and burning spirit-flesh like a rusted blade. It smelled of wet wool, curdled milk, and old graves.
The ten minutes were up.
"Company!" I barked, my voice cracking under the strain of the channel.
BOOM.
The ventilation grates high in the cavern walls blew out. They didn't just fall; they were kicked out by a force that turned the heavy iron mesh into shrapnel.
Black oil poured from the holes, shadows made liquid. But it wasn't just slime. Forms pulled themselves out of the ooze, dropping onto the catwalks and the factory floor with wet, slapping sounds.
Sentinels. But not the pristine gold-and-white soldiers of the Citadel. These were wrong. Their armor was fused to their flesh with veins of black corruption. Their faces were blank slates of void-matter. And with them came the beasts, chimeras with rotting lion heads, harpies dripping black ichor, minotaurs with horns made of void-glass.
Hera couldn't get in, so she was emptying the garbage chute on top of us.
"Do not break the circle!" Kaelen roared from the northern position. He was glowing, literally burning, his skin wreathed in white flames that poured into Aria. He couldn't move. If he stopped the heat, she would shatter under the hammer.
"They're going to flank us!" I yelled, watching a corrupted centaur gallop along a catwalk, aiming a bow at Elias's exposed back.
The Weaver was entranced, his turquoise eyes fixed on the empty air above Aria, manipulating threads of light I could barely see. He wouldn't even see the arrow coming.
Hephaestus raised the hammer for another strike on Aria’s hip. "If you stop the flow, the metal cools! If the metal cools while I am shaping it, she dies!"
