At minus twelve thousand two hundred and forty meters below the Antarctic ice sheet, the Central Glacial Caldera stretched out like an endless, frozen sea of black iron-hard metal glass.
The heat had dropped past the limits of conventional terrestrial weather, hovering at a terrifying minus one hundred and sixty-two degrees. At this total-zero cusp, surrounding moisture didn’t condense into fog. It precipitated instantly into billions of tiny rime needles that drifted through the air like diamond dust, capable of lacerating unshielded corneal tissue in a single breath.
Arthur Vance stood twenty paces out from the breached northern inner wall. His magnetic crampons were locked onto the glassy floor.
Beneath his storm hood, the heated baked-clay pre-heaters of his Mk. IV Arctic Triage Exosuit were whining at maximum spark draw. Every breath tasted of dry, crushed star-iron, pure ozone, and the metal sting of Zone 5 cosmic mana. Yet through the five-pillar soul-sync network, Arthur felt no cold. Pip’s golden core burned against his collar bone like a tiny sun, streaming thirty-eight degrees of dry, steady warmth directly into his main neck blood vessel.
Two miles across the black ice stood the Glacial Titan Ymir-Chimaera.
The sight of the giant statue numbed the rational human mind with ancient dread:
