She came into me like water finding its level.
There was no clatter of plates locking into place, none of the hard, cold pressure I was used to when Erebus built armour on me. One moment she was standing in front of me. The next, she was under my skin and around it at once, and my body simply made room, as though it had been built with a space for her and only now noticed it was empty.
The Abyssal Emperor bone settled along my own skeleton and set there, a second frame laid over the first. I felt it thicken across my ribs and along my forearms, thin out at the joints so nothing caught. The Storm Titan crystals found my nerves, and the world slowed down by half. The void essence ran through everything last, cool and steady, and held the rest together so that none of it pulled me apart.
I flexed my hand. Bone slid smoothly over the back of it, followed the movement, and slid back.
Then I noticed the second sense.
