The silence that followed the death of the beast was not silence at all. It breathed. It pulsed. The shadows around Raen shifted as if something older than the world itself stirred just beneath the surface, tasting the blood in the air.
Keir limped behind him, hand pressed to his ribs, his breath ragged. The new ally, Sareth, kept his blade drawn even as the air calmed. Raen said nothing.
The enemy hadn't screamed when she died.
She—the girl with stitched eyes and a mouth full of names. The one who had known his past. Who whispered his sins in voices not hers.
Raen stood over her corpse, his boots soaking in the growing pool of black ichor. But he knew better. Corpses didn't always stay dead in this world. Especially not ones like her.
"We need to leave," Keir muttered, but Raen didn't move.
Because her body was twitching.
Sareth raised his blade, but Raen stopped him with a gesture.
The corpse convulsed, then something peeled out of it.
Not flesh.
A shadow.
