Suddenly, Vonjo noticed an arrow beneath his feet. He remembered this one. It was dragged by one of the arrows he pulled. Not wanting to waste it, he kicked it upward and caught it with his right hand.
Then he placed it back on his bow and pulled it hard!
The moment the final arrow slipped from Vonjo's fingers and buried itself deep into a reanimated corpse's forehead—splintering bone, skin, and the rotted echo of cursed life—the battlefield fell into a strange hush.
For a heartbeat, silence reigned, filled only with the sharp hiss of the dying wind, and the faint twitching of twitching limbs that hadn't yet realized they were dead again.
Smoke coiled around Vonjo like a cape made of vengeance, the lingering scent of charred flesh and broken souls thick on his breath.
But the Sand Man felt it first.
The shift.
The pause.
The absence.
