Aiden stood on the shattered balcony, wind clawing at his cloak. The taste of ash and copper hung in the air, heavy as guilt.
All around, the manor still groaned from the devastation below—stone scorched, glass shattered, servants wailing beneath the distant crackle of collapsing beams.
The scent of burning wine and iron mingled, an offering to something old, terrible, and hungry.
Then—silence.
The kind that pressed against the chest until breath itself became rebellion.
From the dark between the stars, wings unfolded.
A shadow fell across the courtyard, vast and breathing. Talons scraped marble, leaving gouges deep as wounds. The creature that landed before him was both radiant and wrong—a being born between nightmares and divinity.
Its armor gleamed like molten obsidian, its face too beautiful, too cruel. Elven symmetry marred by scaled skin, curved horns flowing like strands of black flame down its back.
The abomination raised its head, and the world dimmed around it.
