A heavy silence blanketed the battlefield, so dense it seemed to smother even the wind. Nothing moved. Not the leaves. Not the clouds. Not even breath—except for Tonya's, which came in trembling, ragged waves, each exhale a fragile vibration against the stillness.
She lay sprawled across the blood-streaked earth, her gaze locked ahead, wide and unblinking. Her body refused to move, frozen in a blend of shock and horror.
Ahead of her, something shifted.
The stone bat. It had been dropped after the strike—a monstrous slab of jagged rock, half-cracked and soaked in crimson. And now… now it moved again. With a low grunt, the beast—towering, misshapen, inhuman—moved it.
Tonya's eyes didn't leave the spot. Her heart thudded against her ribs like it was trying to escape her chest.
The blood pooled beneath the bat was thick, darker than it should have been.
And amidst the ruined mess… a hand.
Not just any hand.
Steve's hand.
