The wind howled across the jagged plain, driving sharp, stinging pellets of pumice into my face. I pulled Tove close to my side, shielding her from the worst of the wind with my unbroken wing. She stumbled slightly, the adrenaline of the crash beginning to wear off, leaving her muscles trembling and weak.
I focused my thermal sight, pushing my heat-sensitive vision to its absolute limit through the swirling gray haze. The landscape was a dark, featureless blur of rapidly cooling rock. I swept my gaze across the cliff face a hundred yards to our right, searching for the tell-tale thermal bleed of a subterranean vent.
There. A faint, steady orange glow pulsing from a narrow fissure at the base of the cliff. A stable lava tube.
"This way," I growled, practically dragging her forward.
The trek was a brutal, agonizing slog. Every step sent a jolt of fire through my left wing. The wind tore at us, aggressively stripping the heat from my scales. Tove was completely silent, her head ducked down, her hand gripping mine with a desperate, crushing strength. The cold void of her touch was still anchoring my Rebirth Cycle, but I could feel the quality of her cold shifting. It was no longer the soothing, steady baseline that somehow quieted my fire. It was a creeping, lethal frost—the physical reality of the plunging temperature finally bleeding through her failing suit.
We reached the base of the cliff. The fissure was narrow, just wide enough for me to squeeze my massive shoulders through if I folded my wings tight.
I pushed Tove inside first, then turned sideways, grinding my armored chest against the rough rock as I forced myself into the opening. The jagged stone scraped painfully against my wounded wing, but I didn't stop until we were fully inside.
We stumbled into a wider, cavernous chamber.
The transition was jarring. The deafening howl of the ash storm was instantly muffled, reduced to a distant, hollow moan outside the cave entrance. The air inside was completely still, smelling of damp earth and ancient, cooled basalt.
I let go of Tove's hand and slumped heavily against the curved wall of the lava tube. The sudden stillness, the lack of immediate, life-threatening danger, shattered the fragile control I had maintained during the flight and the crash.
The adrenaline receded, and the Rebirth Cycle roared back to life.
The feral beast in my chest violently clawed at my ribs. The incandescent fault lines in my neck and arms flared a blinding, agonizing white. I gasped, my back arching against the cold stone as the pain hit me like a physical blow. The pressure wasexcruciating, demanding the detonation I was violently denying it.
I squeezed my eyes shut, digging my obsidian talons into the stone wall, fighting the urge to scream.
In the sudden, heavy silence of the cave, a sharp, high-pitched whine echoed off the walls.
I opened my eyes, the white-hot glare of my veins casting long, demonic shadows across the cavern.
Tove was standing a few feet away, her arms wrapped tightly around her waist. She was shivering. A violent, uncontrollable tremor that racked her small frame.
The small, circular power-indicator on the chest of her silver hazard suit was flashing rapidly. It glowed blue, then pulsed a weak red.
Whine.
The light went completely dark.
The faint, mechanical hum of the suit's internal climate control system died, leaving nothing but the sound of water dripping somewhere deep in the cave.
I stared at the dead indicator light, a new, entirely different kind of terror gripping my chest.
The storm outside was freezing the world. The deep, subterranean cave offered shelter from the wind and the ash, but the ambient temperature of the stone was dropping rapidly. I had protected her from the fire. I had broken my wings to shield her from the rock.
But as her lips began to take on a faint, bluish tint in the dim light, I realized the true threat had only just begun. The technology keeping her alive had failed.
The cold was going to kill her.
Chapter 5
Tove
The darkness of the lava tube was absolute, a heavy, suffocating weight that pressed against my eyeballs until they ached. The violent, deafening howl of the ash storm outside had been reduced to a low, hollow moan at the mouth of the cave, leaving nothing but the sound of water dripping from the ceiling and the rapid, terrifyingly loud clatter of my own teeth.
I clamped my jaw shut, trying to force the muscles to stop spasming, but the cold was too deep. It was already in my bones.
The small, circular power-indicator on the chest of my silver environmental suit had gone dark ten minutes ago. Without the internal battery powering the thermal regulators, the lightweight fabric was useless. It had been designed to reflect the crushing external heat of Ignis IV, but now, trapped in the subterranean chill of the volcanic winter, it was acting like a refrigerator, aggressively trapping the freezing cave air against my skin.
I curled my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms tightly around my shins.
