Weary and hollow-eyed, Mavius let his gaze fall upon the result of the enemy's work.
So sudden, it seemed to carve open the marrow of his fear and lay it bare for the vultures.
He had believed, with the quiet stubbornness of hope of a man drowning who still yearn for a rope, that he had more time. Not much perhaps, but enough to maneuver, enough to prepare, enough to breathe between one crisis that had just ended and the next he knew was coming.
Yet now, as he stood before the raw wound carved into the fortress of the Fingers, he understood he had been living inside an illusion. Time had not been thinning. Time had been long gone.
