The seal was there, running straight through the center of the red heat like a black seam in a piece of fine linen.
She could feel it without looking... a hard, dead ridge of cold iron that had been driven through her bones until it had grown around it like an old nail in an oak tree.
Deep down under that black line, something else was moving.
Pyronox was there. He wasn't roaring, and he wasn't striking the bars of his cage; he was simply present, a vast, golden bulk that felt as large as the western ridge when the fog is low.
He didn't look at her, and he didn't offer her his teeth; he was just what he was, and the sheer size of his breathing was still enough to make her heart skip a beat in her breast despite witnessing his consciousness many times in the past.
She didn't go down toward his cave. She stayed on the shelf, her eyes fixed on the black line where her own blood met the work of the southern mages.
