Azel failed to understand — truly, he did.
How in the frozen hells could something look so utterly disgusting?
It stood before him in all its grotesque glory, an abomination stitched together from a nightmare Kyone would have.
The thing had the head of a beetle — mandibles twitching, clicking, and dripping some foul venom that hissed when it touched snow.
Yet below that insectoid crown stretched the body of a man, or something that had once been manlike.
Broad shoulders with sickly pale flesh, a ribcage that bulged unnaturally as if lungs were choking within, and arms twisted with too many joints, bending in wrong angles.
Its torso rose and fell as though breathing, but no life could exist in something so corrupted.
Its humanoid frame was an insult, a mockery of both beast and man.
Azel's lips curled.
'What the fuck made this atrocity?'
Before he could blink, pain seared through his shoulder.
