The morning light crawled across Aethelgard like a pale, sickly wound, bleeding through the tall windows of the Nightwing estate. The city outside was unnaturally quiet, the kind of silence that follows a massacre a forced calm, as if the cobblestone streets and stone spires were holding their breath, terrified to acknowledge the carnage of the previous night.
Rex opened his eyes slowly, but there was no comfort in waking. Sleep had become a transactional resource, something he rationed out like ammunition between campaigns.
His muscles screamed with the phantom memory of violence the wet crunch of cartilage, the resistance of sinew snapping under his grip, the way blood had felt hot and slick against his knuckles when he finally broke Theo.
He could still see Theo's jaw hanging at an impossible angle, the man's pleas dissolving into wet, gurgling sounds as Rex systematically dismantled him.
