The volcanic vents of Mount Kar-Vash hissed with dying steam as the violet magma below the suspended Crucible slowly congealed into solid, glassy obsidian.
On the fractured altar of the hanging ziggurat, the silence was broken only by the steady, labored cadence of Malakor’s breath against Aurelia’s neck. His heavy frame was dead weight against her, his scorched hands twitching as the cooling starlight from the Eighth Relic seeped through his torn leather gloves, knitting his strained marrow back into tempered iron.
Around Aurelia’s throat, the Ring of the Primordial Vessel rested like a collar of spun midnight.
It was neither cold nor hot. The liquid star metal had shaped itself seamlessly to the curve of her collarbone, absorbing the chaotic, killing radiance of the Seven Shards into a closed, infinite circuit. The blinding glyphs along her shoulders had softened to faint, silver-violet constellations that pulsed in perfect harmony with the beating of her heart.
"Can you stand, warlord?" Aurelia murmured, her fingers gently threading through his soot-dusted hair, lifting his face so she could look into his eyes.
Malakor blinked through the stinging grime, his amber irises clearing as the feral fog of the void-strike receded. A slow, wolfish grimace tugged at the corner of his bloody mouth.
"I can stand," he rasped, his voice rough as crushed gravel. "Though next time an ancient relic wants a soul to chew on, you're buying the wine."
He braced one heavy hand against the fractured altar, groaning as his corded muscles bunched, hauling himself upright. He reached down and caught Aurelia beneath the elbow, helping her to her feet with that instinctive, protective vigilance that never left him, even when his own knees were shaking beneath his armor.
Aurelia looked around the silent caldera.
The three Ash-Beasts were gone, swallowed by the cooling stone or shattered into ash. Across the sky-iron chain to the north, their obsidian steeds waited patiently on the basalt shelf, their runic hooves glowing softly in the twilight haze.
"We need to get off this chain before the anchor links shear," Aurelia said, sheathing her ancestral blade with a crisp, clear chime. "The Crucible is sinking."
With the dross drained into the torque around her neck, the ancient ziggurat had lost its aetheric buoyancy. The colossal iron links were groaning with mounting strain, sending showers of rust spiraling down into the congealed abyss.
Malakor retrieved his great sword, wiping the beast-ichor from the steel with his forearm before sliding it into the back-scabbard.
"Let's move, then," he grunted, wrapping his left arm around her waist, anchoring her against his hip as they stepped onto the vibrating iron links. "I'm eager to see the old weaver's face when we walk back through his garden with his boogeyman around your neck."
The ride back across the volcanic rift was swift and silent.
The obsidian steeds glided effortlessly over the jagged glass, their misty crests parting the thinning purple vapors. By the time the twin moons crested the eastern peaks, the dark crags of Kar-Vash had given way once more to the pristine, white quartz causeways and weeping copper willows of Shen-Zhul.
At the northern gatehouse, the entire court of the Pale Lotus had assembled.
Thousands of immortals lined the terraces, their white silk robes fluttering like moths in the night wind. At the center of the avenue, seated upon his golden-framed loom, Patriarch Vaelen waited in utter stillness, flanked by Saphira and forty armed wardens carrying amethyst staves.
As Aurelia and Malakor rode through the open archway, dismounting before the pavilion, a collective, breathless gasp rippled through the gathered assembly.
Vaelen’s skeletal hands stopped entirely upon the golden strings.
His blind, star-lit sockets locked onto the sleek, midnight torque circling Aurelia’s throat. He leaned forward, his trembling fingers clutching the arms of his chair, his translucent chest heaving as if he had forgotten how to draw breath for eight centuries.
"The Ring..." the patriarch whispered, his dry voice cracking with raw, uncomprehending shock. "You... you anchored the dross? The void-well did not swallow your minds?"
Malakor stepped forward, his heavy combat boots cracking against the pristine quartz, his scarred jaw thrust out in pure, venomous mockery. He spat a mouthful of dark blood onto the clean white stone at the patriarch's feet.
"Your mountain was full of overgrown geckos and bad air, old man," Malakor sneered, resting his hand on the pommel of his sword. "The Empress has her crown. Now, tell me why my fleet shouldn't turn this pretty white birdcage of yours into gravel."