Light exploded from the impact. Violet sparks showered over us. The force of it knocked Flynn’s head to the side.
He yelped, and it was a real, vocal sound.
He shook his head, ears flapping. The grey mist around his shoulders coalesced back into solid fur. He scrambled backward, eyes wide, teeth bared in a reflexive snarl.
Ow!The projection was loud, indignant, and beautifully clear.You hit me!
"You were fading out!" I yelled back, grabbing his ears and pulling his face close to mine. "You were turning into dust, you idiot!"
He blinked, the amber fire returning to his gaze. He shook himself, a full-body rattle that sent a cloud of bone dust flying. He looked at his paws. They were solid.
I...He looked at me, then at the endless white waste.I stopped running.
You stopped being distinct,Elias corrected, hopping onto Flynn’s head and pecking him sharply between the ears.You are a closed system, Wolf. Do not merge with the open system.
Flynn growled low in his throat, but he leaned into my touch. "Don't do that again," I whispered, my forehead resting against his snout. "I can't carry you if you're not there."
He licked the blood, golden and hot, from my neck wound. The sensation was rough and grounding.
Tastes like lightning,he murmured.Wakes me up.
"Good," Kaelen said, standing up and brushing bone dust from his trousers. He looked shaken. "Because we aren't stopping again. If you have to run circles around us, Flynn, do it. But stay solid."
We regrouped. The scare had injected a fresh dose of adrenaline into our veins, burning off the lethargy.
We crossed the bone desert. It was grueling. The dust shifted underfoot, sucking at our boots, trying to drag us down. Every step was a battle for purchase.
Flynn refused to walk now. He ran in wide, looping arcs around the group, creating a perimeter of motion. He was a blur of grey and brown, a satellite orbiting the gravity of the pack.
Checking the fl-fl-flank,Flynn stuttered mentally as he zoomed past.Nothing but dust. Dust and quiet.
"He's manic," I observed, leaning heavily on Thane’s arm. My limp was getting worse. The crack in my neck was burning again, the seal Kaelen made already failing.
"Better manic than nonexistent," Thane said stoically.
As we neared the far edge of the desert, the ground began to vibrate.
Not a tremor. A rhythm.
Thump... Thump... Thump...
It was faint, felt through the soles of our boots rather than heard.
"Is that the Titan?" I asked, looking down.
No,Elias’s voice was tight.The Titan is geological. This... this is biological.
We crested the final dune of bone dust and stopped.
Below us, the world fell away into a massive, spiraling crater. It was miles wide, descending into a darkness so absolute it hurt to look at.
But hovering over the center of the crater, suspended by chains of pure shadow that stretched up into the grey sky, was... something.
It looked like a heart.
A massive, beating heart made of black glass and wet smoke. It was the size of a cathedral. With every beat a shockwave of grey distortion rippled out, washing over the landscape, erasing details, smoothing out rough edges.
And feeding into it were streams of silver light. Souls. Flowing from the north, from the south, from the very air itself.
