The air changed.
At first, it was subtle—no flash of light, no roar of magic—but the shift was unmistakable. One heartbeat Loren Vance was locked in the same rhythm of claw and blade, his body screaming with exhaustion but his pride refusing to let him fall. The next heartbeat, everything was different.
Erebus moved.
Not as it had before, measured and restrained, but with a sudden weight that pressed into the bones of every person watching. The wolf's golden eyes narrowed, and the glow within them sharpened into something terrifying—no longer the patient gaze of a predator amusing itself with prey, but the raw gleam of an executioner unveiling its blade.
