We sprinted.
It wasn't a run; it was a negotiation with catastrophe. The mountain wasn't just shaking; it was unravelling. The Titan was stretching its limbs after a millennia-long nap, and we were fleas on a dog that had decided to scratch. The tunnels leading away from the Forge were twisting, the walls heaving in and out like breathing ribs.
"Left!" Thane bellowed from the front, his eyes squeezed shut as he felt the vibrations in the stone. "The right tunnel is dead! The lava is cresting!"
We veered left, banking hard into a narrow service shaft that smelled of ancient sulfur and panic. The heat was suffocating. My new skin drank it in, the runes on my arm glowing happily, but I could hear Flynn wheezing behind me, the air too thin and too hot for his lupine lungs.
"It’s getting tight!" Flynn coughed, scrambling over a pile of fallen gears. "Are we sure this goes out? Because it feels like we're crawling into a throat."
"It leads to the surface vents," Kaelen growled, bringing up the rear, his sword drawn and glowing with a light that pushed back the encroaching shadows. "Unless the surface has moved. Which is a distinct possibility."
The tunnel shuddered violently. A crack appeared in the ceiling ahead of us, widening instantly into a fissure. A curtain of magma, thick and blindingly bright, began to pour through.
"Stop!" I skidded to a halt, throwing my metal arm out to catch Elias before he ran straight into the molten waterfall.
"We’re cut off!" Elias gasped, wiping soot from his face. He looked at the magma, calculating flow rates and cooling times in a panic. "We cannot cross! The thermal output is..."
"Jump it," I said.
They looked at me. The gap across the fissure was thirty feet, obscured by the falling curtain of lava.
"Aria," Flynn panted, leaning against the wall. "I can jump that. Kaelen can fly that. Thane can make it through. But you..."
"I can take it," I interrupted him.
I didn't wait for a debate. I backed up three paces. The power inside me, the Titan's weight, the Dragon's fire, was a coiled spring in my gut. I felt heavy, indestructible.
I ran.
"Aria, no!" Kaelen shouted.
I hit the edge of the fissure and launched myself.
I didn't float. I pierced the air like a bullet. I hit the curtain of magma chest-first.
It didn't burn. It tickled. The star-metal alloy fused to my flesh absorbed the heat instantly, channeling it into the bioluminescent veins that ran through my body. For a split second, I was inside the fire, seeing the world in shades of orange and black, and then I punched through to the other side.
I landed on the far ledge, skidding on one knee, smoke trailing from my shoulders.
I stood up and turned back to them through the fire.
"Clear!" I yelled, my voice ringing with power.
There was a pause on the other side. Then, a dark shape blurred through the curtain, Flynn, landing in a roll. Then Thane, barrelling through like a boulder, shaking off droplets of liquid rock. Then Kaelen, carrying Elias, his wings flared tight to his body to shield the Phoenix.
They landed beside me, staring. My armor and under clothes were half-burnt away, scorched tatters clinging to my form, revealing the obsidian chrome skin beneath.
"Show off," Flynn grinned weakly, though his eyes were wide.
"Keep moving!" Thane barked, already turning down the corridor. "The floor is literally lava and what isn't is getting thin!"
We scrambled up a steep incline, the ground beneath us hot enough to melt rubber. We were climbing continuously, aiming for the daylight, or whatever passed for it now that the Devourer was eating the sky.
The tunnel opened up suddenly, dumping us out onto a narrow maintenance gantry clinging to the side of a massive vertical shaft.
"The main chimney," Elias identified it, leaning over the railing. "We are above the Forge now."
I looked down. Miles below, through the smoke and the distance, I saw the red glow of the Anvil where I had been unmade. But I also saw something else.
