Sol didn't take his eyes off her for a fraction of a second. "What does that mean for her?" He asked knowingly.
"It means her body is trying to swallow an ocean through a path made for stream," Zephyra spat, wiping a smear of dark blood from her chin with a trembling forearm. "A warrior's vessels at Layer 4 are forged to hold a certain amount of essence.
To reach Layer 5, the core must expand. If her core cannot endure the pressure of the expansion, or if her spirit beast cannot evolve to anchor the new density... her core will implode from the inside out under its own mass."
Sol's jaw tightened until his molars ground together, his neon-crimson eyes scanning every twitch of Veylara's rigid silhouette.
In the center of the clearing, Veylara's entire body began to shudder.
A pale, silver-red vapor started seeping from her pores, rising into the cool night air like steam off a red-hot iron drawn from the forge.
