Maximum intensity — the cloak's fire expanding beyond his body's surface and pushing outward in all directions, the flame meeting the magma ring.
Fire and magma meeting — the two heat sources interacting at the boundary, the combined thermal output producing something between the two that was hotter than either alone.
The magma ring cooled at the contact surface — the fire heating the magma to the point where the surface layer solidified faster than it would have solidified naturally, the thermal equilibrium between the Veil's fire and the magma's own heat producing a crust on the magma's surface that the fire had paradoxically created by being hotter than the magma's surface temperature.
The magma ring developed a solid crust.
A surface Klin could stand on — or cross.
He stepped onto the hardened magma crust.
It held.
