Cruoris first light touched the Cruentus.
The crimson hue of the Black Earth's morning reached the Heart through the gaps the ancient trunks had grown apart enough to leave — descending in columns onto the red canopy, the bloodglow's cycling crimson giving way to the different crimson of the first light, the long Umbrath night that had held the whole expedition finally releasing its claim on the forest. The Red Widow's shriek — the hunting call that had echoed through the Heart and rattled its denizens — had subsided. The forest had gone calm.
Calm the way a thing went calm when the violence in it had simply moved elsewhere.
Kei watched the glade from his fissure.
The Choir-Eater was nearly finished. Seven of the derived apparitions left, no more — the long body working through them one at a time, the interrupted feast resuming toward its end. An hour, he judged. An hour at most before the last of them was gone and the glade held nothing that needed feeding.
