"Deal," I gritted out. "Thane, give me a hand."
The Bear pulled me up. I swayed, feeling top-heavy, my metal arm weighing a thousand pounds. Gravity pulled at me strangely, tugging at my left side more than my right.
I took a step. My boot crunched on the glass.
Pain.
It shot up my leg, white-hot, but I clamped down on it. I locked my knees. I focused on the bone map Hades had given me.
"North," I pointed with my good hand. "Toward the..." I squinted. "Toward the drop."
The terrain ahead didn't just slope; it fell away. The horizon line was missing. It looked like the edge of a flat earth.
"The Soul-Well," Elias murmured.The drain.
"Flynn, take point," I ordered. "But stay in sight. Do not run ahead."
Running helps,Flynn projected, already trotting toward the drop-off, his form leaving trailing afterimages like a ghost.If I run, the static can't catch me.
"Thane, rear guard," I said. "Kaelen, you're with me. Elias... try not to burn out."
We moved out.
Leaving the banks of the Phlegethon felt like walking away from a graveyard, only to enter a tomb. The silence of the void plains returned, heavier than before. The crunch of our boots on the obsidian was swallowed instantly, echoing for a fraction of a second before being smothered.
My neck throbbed in time with my heartbeat.Thump-burn. Thump-burn.
Kaelen walked so close his arm brushed mine with every step. He wasn't holding me, but he was hovering, radiating a protective heat that kept the worst of the soul-numbing chill at bay.
"You're quiet," I murmured to him after a few minutes of walking.
"I am calculating," Kaelen replied, eyes scanning the broken terrain.
"Calculating what?"
"How many things I am going to kill when we get out of here," he said simply. "Hera. The Titan. Whatever architect designed this hellhole."
"Technically, the original Titans designed it," Elias offered helpfully from above. "Though the lack of aesthetic variation is disappointing. It’s very... binary."
"It's a garbage chute," Thane rumbled from behind us. "It wasn't meant for living things."
We crested a ridge of razor-sharp slate and looked down.
The landscape changed again. The glass gave way to a vast, sloping basin of what looked like white sand. But as we got closer, the smell hit us.
It wasn't sand. It was bone dust.
Miles of it. Ground down to powder.
And in the center of the white desert, Flynn was waiting.
He wasn't moving.
He stood frozen, one paw raised, his entire body vibrating so hard he looked like a blur. A low, continuous whine was broadcasting from his mind, drilling into my skull.
Stuck,Flynn whimpered.Stuck stuck stuck.
"Flynn!" I shouted, forgetting to conserve my breath.
