Draven knelt beside my broken body, his heavy, scale-encrusted hands trembling as he hovered them over the gaping wound in my chest. The monstrous, bloodthirsty aura that had consumed him moments prior was completely gone, replaced by a suffocating, hollow quiet.
The sky above Vael'ethor continued to churn with bruised crimson clouds and violent bursts of purple lightning, but the battlefield surrounding us had fallen dead silent. The surviving shadow-fiends had fled into the jagged mountains, leaving only the stench of copper, ozone, and burnt ash hanging thick in the air.
"Seraphina…" he choked out, his voice stripped of its demonic resonance, leaving behind only the raw, shattered baritone of a man watching his world burn. "Don't you dare close your eyes. Look at me. Look at me!"
