"Hound!" Kaelor's roar tore from his throat, raw and desperate, a sound that rattled the very walls of the cavern.
The sight before him warped and blurred, not with the chaos of battle, but with the memory of another loss.
He was back there again… the day his closest friend plummeted from the top of a five-storey building, the sickening sound of impact, the days and nights that followed when he drove himself to exhaustion just to provide for the grieving family left behind.
Seeing Hound's body lurch beneath the barrage of crimson quills was like reliving that moment in brutal clarity.
Something inside him broke.
The stone beneath Kaelor's boots, ancient, weathered, and hardened through centuries, could not endure the surge of mana flooding his veins. The ground buckled, sinking under him with a shattering crack that radiated outward like the spiderweb fracture of glass.
