Seraphis felt the world narrow to the weight of a single breath. The moon swelled at her back until it filled half the sky, a swollen coin with the smell of iron and rust that pulsed with an awful heartbeat.
The air smelled of copper and gunpowder; it was the smell that never faded from memories.
The clouds bled; it was not droplets of water that fell from that sky, but drops the color of fresh meat, and they struck the leaves and the ground with a steady, wet rhythm. They did not splash so much as sink, darkening wood and cloth and skin, like ink spreading through paper.
She gripped the hilt of her blade until the leather bit into her palms. It was a simple thing in design, a thing sharpened by the battle she endured as a child, as the outsider that was never welcome anywhere, even in her own clan. But now it felt like a different life.
