The ashes stirred. They didn't just scatter across the plaza the way ash normally would. They pulled together instead, like a thousand unseen strings were stitching the corpse pile back into something whole again.
Jin clutched the staff, struggling to breathe, his ribs shattered from the last exchange, every movement sending a fresh jolt of agony tearing through his chest. He watched, helpless, as the pile of corpses twisted and reformed, bones snapping into place one after another as they slowly built themselves into a towering figure.
The flesh melted away entirely this time, burning down to nothing and leaving behind perfectly smooth bone underneath. Those bones stretched and hardened further, forming a massive skeletal frame wrapped in ashen gray armor that looked like it had been forged straight out of war itself. Gold light pulsed faintly through the cracks running along its bones, like something alive still beat inside its ribs.
