The expressions of pain, fear, and despair.
For some reason, an intense excitement welled from deep inside his core. The smell of blood. The desperate cries. He couldn't help but revel in them.
He had been moving constantly—defending, killing, hunting. But now, as he stopped for the first time since the massacre began, he swept his gaze around.
Immediately, the metallic stench of blood assaulted his senses. Bodies lay scattered across the clearing, motionless and dyed crimson. Some were still twitching. Puddles of blood pooled beneath them, streams of red painting the entire ground in a grotesque tableau. Severed limbs and scattered organs added to the horror.
The clearing had become a nightmare.
And he had become the monster within it.
The morning sun, indifferent to the carnage below, continued its slow climb, casting long golden light across a battlefield that, an hour before, had simply been a village square.
