EIGHT
Aria
The shelter Elias found wasn’t a cave; it was a geode of reality in a world of static.
It was tucked into the side of a massive, spiraling basalt column that rose out of the grey fog like a fossilized tree trunk. The entrance was narrow, barely wide enough for Thane’s shoulders, but inside, the air was different. It didn't taste like old pennies and despair. It smelled faintly of dry dust and stillness. Not the hungry, waiting stillness of the void, but the patient, enduring stillness of deep earth.
Old Stone, Thane had rumbled when we found it.Predates the infection. The Devourer can't chew through this. Too dense.
He had practically collapsed the moment we crossed the threshold, his legs giving out as if the strings holding him up had been cut.
Now, hours later, the others were giving us space. Kaelen sat near the entrance, his back to us, sharpening a piece of obsidian against his own scales. Flynn was curled into a ball at Kaelen’s feet, twitching in a dreamless sleep. Elias was perched on a high ledge, staring at the geometric patterns of the ceiling, muttering equations under his breath to keep the madness at bay.
They knew. The bond between them was a web of shared instincts, and they knew the Bear was broken.
I walked to the back of the grotto where Thane sat.
The grief had shaken him so much that he had shifted back to his human form while he slept, the Titan magic unable to command a human heart any longer, but he looked terrifyingly diminished. The massive, immovable wall of a man I knew was hunched over, his elbows on his knees, his head hanging low. His skin was the color of wet ash. He was staring at his hands, hands that had crushed rock and built mountains, as if they were foreign objects stained with something he couldn't wash off.
He was shaking. A fine, continuous tremor ran through his massive frame, vibrating the air around him.
"Thane," I said softly.
He flinched. He didn't look up.
"Don't come closer, Aria," his voice was a ruin, scraping against the silence. "The gravity... it's still fluctuating. I can't control the field. I'll pull you down."
"You won't," I said, ignoring him. I stepped into his personal space. The air around him felt heavy, pressurized, like standing at the bottom of the ocean. It pressed against my eardrums, demanding I kneel.
I didn't kneel. I walked until my boots were touching his.
"I almost stayed," he whispered to the floor. "At the Ridge. I felt the mud closing over my head, and I... I was relieved. I wanted it to take me."
He finally looked up. His eyes were rimmed with red, hollowed out by centuries of guilt that the Underworld had just ripped open and spread out for everyone to see.
"I am a danger to you," he choked out. "I am too heavy for this journey. I am a crack in the foundation. You should leave me here."
"Stand up," I commanded.
He blinked, confused by the sharpness of my tone. "Aria?—"
"Stand. Up."
Slowly, painfully, he unfolded himself. He towered over me, broad and broken. The tremor in his hands got worse when he wasn't bracing them against his knees.
I reached out with my left hand, the star-metal one, and grabbed his right hand.
His flesh was ice cold. My metal was furnace hot.
I squeezed. I didn't hold back. I let the metal contract, applying enough pressure to crush a normal man’s bones. I forced him to feel the unyielding reality of the metal.
"You think you're a burden?" I asked, stepping closer, forcing him to look down at me. "You think because you carry the weight of the world, you're dragging us down?"
"I sank," he argued, his voice cracking. "I sank into the past."
"You anchored us," I corrected furiously. "You are the floor, Thane. You are the only reason we aren't drifting off into space."
I took his other hand with my flesh one, lacing our fingers together.
