The temperature within the Gates of Eternity did not rise; it ceased to calculate cold.
Gwen knelt in the grey soot, her bare hands saturated with the thick, tepid mixture of dark blood and violet void-fluid that was rapidly cooling against the front of her scorched wool tunic. Lucien's head rested heavily against her thigh. His remaining grey eye was fixed, staring blankly upward into the rotating geometric ceiling, the iris no longer spinning, stripped of its brass focal rings. The long, ink-stained fingers that had spent ninety winters tracing the survival lines of the North lay uncurled in the black glass dust, entirely limp.
"Lucien," Gwen whispered, her voice a low, raspy scrape that barely carried across the narrow space. She pressed her forehead against his cold cheek, her body trembling with a violent, systemic shock. "Lucien, breathe. The alignment is still here. I am holding the heat for you. Just draw the line."
