The heat radiating from the chasm was an open furnace, blistering the skin and curling the leather edges of Aurelia’s harness.
Between their narrow ledge and the colossal adamantine threshold of Kar-Drakor lay eighty paces of empty, boiling air. Below, the magma sea churned with sluggish, primordial violence, burping bubbles of superheated gas that exploded with the concussive force of mortar shells against the cavern roof.
"There is no bridge," Malakor growled, squinting through the sulfurous haze as he edged toward the sheared cliff. His jaw was tight, his hand resting on the hilt of his great sword, calculating the impossible distance. "Even with climbing lines, the silk would vaporize before it crossed half the chasm."
"The bridge is not made of timber or rope, butcher," Theron rasped, leaning heavily against the trembling basalt wall, clutching his iron-tipped cane with both withered hands. "The First Kings walked on the bones of the earth. The gate demands the key before it will grant a path."
Aurelia stepped to the precipice, ignoring the searing updraft that whipped her silver hair into a wild halo around her face.
Beneath her sternum, the Six Shards flared into agonizing life. They pulled violently toward the adamantine doors on the other side, sending spikes of white-hot aether through her veins that made her teeth grit against a scream. The petrified giants flanking the threshold seemed to stir in the shimmering heat haze, their hollow eye sockets flickering with cold, subterranean phosphor.
"Aurelia," Malakor’s voice cut through the roaring magma. His heavy, gloved hand clamped down upon her shoulder, his grip bruising in its intensity. "Do not let it drag you into the fire."
"It's not dragging me, Malakor," she said, her voice dropping into a crystalline resonance that cut clean through the thunder of boiling stone. "It is answering me."
She sheathed her ancestral blade with a sharp, definitive click.
Stepping to the very edge of the sheared cliff, where molten droplets splashed against her boots, she drew a ceremonial dirk from her belt. Without hesitation, she dragged the keen edge across the palm of her left hand.
Crimson welled instantly—not dark mortal blood, but blood shot through with threads of pure, molten silver and void-violet fire.
"By the blood of the Veil," Aurelia chanted, her voice amplified by the Six Shards until it echoed through the cavern like rolling thunder, "by the ashes of Ouros and the depths of the Sunken Spire! I command the earth to kneel before its sovereign!"
She thrust her bleeding palm out over the boiling abyss, letting the iridescent droplets fall toward the magma sea.
The moment the blood touched the superheated air, the cavern screamed.
The boiling magma below froze instantly into black obsidian, petrifying in a shockwave of crystalline frost that spread across the chasm in the blink of an eye. From the depths of the solidified chasm, towering ribs of ancient adamantine thrust upward like the skeleton of a rising leviathan, locking together with deafening, bone-shattering impacts to form a colossal causeway spanning the gap.
At the far end, the monolithic doors of Kar-Drakor groaned.
The petrified horned giants shuddered, their stone hands lifting massive iron halberds from the stone floor, parting to reveal an arched portal of pure, weeping darkness that smelled of dust, old iron, and unfathomable age.
Aurelia swayed on the edge, the immense drain of shaping the continental bedrock threatening to pull her consciousness into the dark.
Malakor caught her before her knees could buckle.
His arms locked around her waist, lifting her bodily back from the drop, turning her so her back hit his solid chest. His gauntleted hand wrapped around her bleeding palm, pressing a clean linen strip against the wound with firm, careful pressure.
"I have you," he growled against the shell of her ear, his breath ragged, his chest heaving with the sheer terror of almost watching her fall. He pressed his lips to the damp crook of her neck, fierce and possessive, flooding their shared soul-tether with his boundless shadow-fire to replace the blood she had spent. "I have you, empress. Breathe."
Aurelia leaned back into him, shivering as his dark heat flooded her chilled marrow, closing the wound in her palm until only a faint silver scar remained. She looked up into his wild, amber eyes, seeing the feral devotion that burned brighter than any magma forge.
"The way is open, my warlord," she whispered, her fingers curling into his leather-clad forearm.
Malakor looked across the newly raised bridge of bone and adamantine, a grim, wolfish smirk breaking through the soot on his face.
"Then let's go into the deep," he rasped, drawing his greatsword with a single, sweeping ring of dark steel, "and see what kind of god dares sleep beneath your throne."