Time inside that nightmare hadn't flowed the same as it did here.
I had spent minutes trapped in hallucination, wandering through illusions that gnawed at my sanity, but out here, in the real forest, only seconds had passed.
That was the only reason I wasn't already dead.
If the eye had dragged on even a little longer, I would've been nothing more than ash in a crater.
Swallowing hard, I steadied myself against the trunk, forcing my shaking legs to hold.
My gaze fell back to the Alpha Deer below, its massive form bathed in the eerie glow of its own power. But something was different now.
Earlier, I had thought the strange ritual it performed with its herd was nothing more than the creation of that illusory eye hanging in the sky. Just a trick to overwhelm me mentally.
But looking at it now—seeing the faint runes still smoldering in the ground around its hooves, the way its antlers shimmered with currents of violent energy—I realized I had been wrong. Dead wrong.
