It wasn't until the ground warmed beneath his bare feet that Osiris finally, finally understood what Isabella meant by "we're going home."
They stood at the edge of a narrow slope, mist parting like a veil, revealing a monstrous cleft in the mountainside — jagged and deep, glowing from within with an eerie, red-orange pulse. Thick, blackened rocks rimmed the entrance like the cracked lips of a beast about to breathe.
And it was breathing.
Slow, steady exhalations of molten heat poured from within, making the air shimmer.
Osiris narrowed his eyes.
This… was a magma vein.
A living, breathing furnace of ancient energy.
Home?
His gaze shifted.
Slowly.
To the small, smug, impossibly annoying woman standing beside him.
"You're joking," he said flatly.
Isabella tilted her head, arching a brow with the most unbothered face he had ever seen. "Why would I be?"
Osiris gave her a look.
The kind of look that said, Have you finally lost your mind, short-stack?
