The cold deepened with every step.
It did not bite like mortal winter—sharp, immediate, punishing. It settled. It crept beneath armor like slow poison, slid into lungs with each breath, coiled around bone until joints ached with the memory of warmth long forgotten.
The snow of the Second Layer was not water frozen by climate; it was ash stripped of memory, falling endlessly from a sky that held no sun, no stars, only an eternal, bruised twilight. Each flake landed without sound, accumulating in soft drifts that muffled footsteps and swallowed echoes.
The wounded demigod stumbled forward again, one hand pressed to the gaping rent in his chestplate.
"Iris—Pegasus—please—" His voice cracked, raw with desperation. "Sekhmet's team… we were separated—there's something hunting us—"
Iris stepped toward him without hesitation, spear already lowered in a non-threatening arc, her expression softening with instinctive compassion.
