Rex remained pinned over the broken god for several long seconds, his chest heaving in ragged, wet gasps. Blood, both his own crimson lifeblood and the strange, shimmering ichor of his fracturing continuity, leaked from the wounds across his ribs and shoulders.
The air around him still hummed with the nauseating static of his own unraveling existence, each heartbeat feeling like a desperate attempt to stitch his soul back to his bones.
But beneath the agony, beneath the bone-deep exhaustion that threatened to collapse his lungs, there was something else: a terrifying, intoxicating surge of triumph.
He looked down at Kaeleth. The god's face, once a monument of divine authority and unassailable certainty, was now a ruin.
The amber gold glow had faded to a sickly, guttering ember, casting long, grotesque shadows across the blood-slicked floor.
