The first step they took was soundless—not an absence of noise but a deliberate smothering, as if the air itself was unwilling to carry their movement, the void swallowing sound like a predator claiming its prey.
Four shapes pressed at the edges of the fading glow, the withered husks of Sylvara's glowberries offering barely enough illumination to outline their twisted frames, their forms a gallery of horrors sculpted by the Abyss's cruel hand.
Azareel's silver eyes, widened, his initial impression shifting—they weren't merely angels twisted by the Abyss.
Each was individually sculpted into something that mirrored the same cruelty but in a different language, their presence a weight that pressed on the soul.
The first stepped forward from the left, his body almost skeletal, every bone wrapped in blackened sinew that pulsed with a slow, steady light—like a dying heartbeat, faint and mournful.
