I snapped my beak, shaking my head to clear the static. I hadn't realized I was gaining altitude. Or maybe the ground was dropping away. Validity was subjective here.
I looked down. Aria was the anchor.
She walked in the center of the formation, her stride uneven but relentless. The sound of her feet hitting the glass was the only real thing in this entire dimension.
Crunch.Metal.
Thud.Flesh.
Crunch.Metal.
Thud.Flesh.
It was a metronome. A heartbeat of unparalleled stubbornness echoing across a silent stage.
Kaelen walked beside her, radiating a heat that I could feel even from up here. Since their...union... in the cave, the Dragon was practically nuclear. His skin glowed with a bronze undertone, and his vertical pupils scanned the horizon with predatory sharpness. He looked like a god of war who had finally remembered his name.
But even he was stepping carefully. The glass was treacherous. One misstep on these razor edges would slice through boot leather and dragon scale alike.
Left,I projected to the group, banking my wings to indicate a ridge that seemed structurally sound.The path on the right collapses. Don't step on the spirals. The math is bad there.
Bad math,Flynn’s thought bubbled up, coloured with the scent of anxiety.I hate bad math and sharp floors.
Flynn was skittering, his claws clicking frantically on the slick surface. He hated this terrain. It offered no purchase, no traction. He was a creature of kinetic friction, and this world was frictionless perfection. He pressed his flank against Thane’s massive leg every few seconds, checking to make sure gravity was still working.
Thane was doing better, surprisingly. The Bear Prince was heavy, yes, but stone understands stone, even when it’s glass. He moved with tectonic deliberation, testing each foothold before committing his weight.
I circled back, breathless. My wings felt like lead. The temptation just to fold them, to drop like a stone and let the glass catch me, was a whispering siren song in the back of my skull.
It would be so clean. Just an impact, and then... stillness. No more variables. No more chaotic equations of war and love and betrayal. Just the final, beautiful nothingness.
I stared at a formation to my left. It was a crystalline spire, twisting upward in a spiral that was flawlessly executed. It wound tighter and tighter until the tip vanished into a point so fine it pierced the dimensional fabric. It was perfect. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
If I flew into it, I bet I could see the code of the universe. I bet I could fix the flaw in my own design.
I banked left. Just a closer look. Just to check the integers.
"Elias!"
The name was a hook. It snagged my consciousness and yanked.
I stalled in mid-air, tumbling awkwardly before catching an updraft of heat coming off Kaelen. I looked down.
Aria had stopped. She was looking up at me, shielding her eyes with her flesh hand. Her metal arm was glowing, the runes pulsing a rhythmic warning.
"Stay with us," she shouted, her voice cutting through the dead air. "You're flying into a trap."
I looked back at the spire.
It wasn't a spire. It was a throat. The spiral wasn't twisting up; it was twistingin. If I had touched it, I would have been spaghettified, unravelled into a string.
Terror, cold and sharp, washed over me. The logic of the Void was a predator. It didn't hunt with claws; it hunted with perfection. It offered solutions to tired minds.
Correction,I projected, swinging back over the group, staying strictly within the thermal column of Kaelen’s rage.Staying close. The geometry is... persuasive.
Keep your eyes on the floor, Bird,Kaelen rumbled, his thought heavy and grounded.The sky is a lie.
I obeyed. I looked down at the glass beneath their feet.
