The flight to the crater felt like moving through a waking nightmare. Distances stretched, angles bent, and my senses kept flagging contradictions as the air itself warped around the Infernal Armis.
"Stay close," I called to Cecilia, Rachel, Seraphina, Rose, and Reika as we flew toward the white-hot pillar marking the impact. "The closer we get, the worse the physics behave."
Rachel widened her Purelight around us—a clean, stabilizing glow that shaved off the worst of the distortion. Sweat stood at her brow. "I can feel it," she said through steady breaths. "Something immense just finished changing."
We crested the last ridge and the world fell away into a broken bowl. Fields had become fused glass and torn stone. At the center: the Infernal Armis—dark, motionless, and patient—twisting space like heat haze that wasn't heat at all.
But the figure beside it froze me cold.
"Gideon," I said, the name a blade of memory.
