He snapped his jaws at me.
I froze.
The Dragon wasn't recognizing me. Or rather, he recognized me, but the context was gone. He was a creature of fire and sky, trapped in a cold, airless box. He was claustrophobic on a cosmic scale.
To my right, Flynn began to whine. It was a high, thin sound that grated on my nerves. The Wolf was pacing in a tight circle, his nose glued to the iron floor.
No scent,Flynn’s mind whimpered, bleeding anxiety into the group consciousness.Dead air. Can't smell the prey. Can't smell the path. Blind. Blind. Blind.
I realized then that the silence wasn't just an absence of noise. It was a presence.
This silence had weight. It pressed against my eardrums, a physical pressure. It was the silence of a tomb that had been sealed for an eon. And for creatures like the Princes, beings of elemental force, of fire, gravity, motion, and design, this absolute null-state was torture. It was sensory deprivation. Even in the Gate there had been some sensations, but not here.
"Thane," I called out, turning to the massive bear. He was the anchor. If anyone could ground us, it was him.
Thane was sinking.
The iron floor wasn't liquid like the mortal earth had been, but Thane’s gravitational density was so high here that he was simply too heavy for the plane to support. His paws had punched through the plating, and he was struggling to pull them free, tearing the metal with groans of exertion. He wasn't panicking like the others; he was shutting down. I could feel his mind retreating, curling into a ball to wait out the winter.
Heavy,Thane’s thoughts rumbled, slow and terrified.The darkness is so heavy.
"Elias!" I shouted, desperation creeping into my voice.
The Phoenix was a wreck. Elias’ bird-form was now composed primarily of dying embers. He hopped erratically across the iron, his wings twitching. Because there were no thermal currents here, no air movement, no heat pockets, he couldn't fly. He was grounded. The visionary who saw thepatterns of the universe was suddenly trapped in a place where there was seemingly no past or future.
I was the only one standing still.
And that’s when I felt it.
My metal skin began to hum.
It started in my left hand, the one fused with the star-metal alloy. A low vibration, barely perceptible at first, then rising in pitch.Zzzzzzt.
It wasn't a warning. It was a resonance.
The star-metal... it was reacting to the frequency of the Underworld.
Pandora had warned me against using the Titan's Heart, but I had ignored her and used it anyway. I had absorbed the power that had been trapped within the Titan's heart, the seed of the deep earth, and now I could feel how connected I was to it.
I wasn't rejecting this place. I was tuning into it.
"I can hear it," I whispered, clutching my metal arm.
I could hear the structure of the realm. It sounded like the groan of a glacier shifting, deep and slow. I could feel the ley lines of death running through the iron floor like current through a wire.
But the Princes couldn't. They were still projecting their Olympian expectations onto a chthonic reality, and the dissonance was driving them feral.
Kaelen roared again, a plume of black fire erupting from his maw. It washed over a puddle of black water, expecting to boil it. The water didn't boil. It just absorbed the heat instantly.
That terrified him.
Cold,Kaelen snarled, backing away, his claws screeching on the floor.The fire dies. It eats the fire.
He lashed out, his tail smashing into a ridge of rusted iron. He was attacking the environment, trying to force a reaction, trying to make the worldmake sense.
"Stop it!" I yelled, running toward him. "You're wasting energy!"
Flynn bolted.
