The floor of the Heart changed with every passing second. Where there had been smooth white stone, there was now a broken landscape of craters, jutting ice, and patches of floor still smouldering where Jack's flames had burned it.
Arthur moved through the wreckage as if it were a ballroom. His Tempest Dance had reached a kind of endless momentum; Luna's gold sigils burned like constellations under his crimson armour, and every step he took left a brief afterimage that broke apart into motes of light. He no longer seemed to think about where he was going. His body simply arrived there, and every movement set up the next three.
Jack's fire hunted him in grey spirals that twisted into shapes almost like geometry—flames with intent behind them, like hounds. They were changing as he cast them. The Abyssal core he'd hidden for so long was bleeding through now, and the edges of each flame curled with a darkness that ate the light where it passed.
