In the open expanse covered in thick snow, sprawled across the white field, lay the broken body of a massive centipede, its corpse stretching nearly four meters long.
The creature's icy blue blood had splattered across the snow in wide arcs, staining the ground in hues of frost and decay. Its thick, chitinous armor, once a near-impervious shell of dark, crystalline plates, was now split and torn, deep gashes running down its side like cleaved bark.
A gaping wound at its neck, jagged and raw, as if left behind by an internal explosion, marked the final blow, the one that had killed the monster.
Around it, four figures rested in silence, surrounded by the ghostly calm of the Frostveil Expanse.
Vlad sat atop the creature's segmented back, resting with one leg drawn up, the other hanging casually over the curve of its armored spine.
