The revenant's scream tore the storm apart. It was no human cry but a raw shattering of sound, like the horn of a broken god, carried high into the bruised sky by the howling wind. Rain hissed as it struck the creature's twisted armor, evaporating in bursts of steam where the unnatural heat of its body fought against the storm's cold.
Leo staggered backward, boots slipping in the mud. His chest burned. The fragment within him pulsed faster now, feverish, take it, take it, take it. Each thrum was a drumbeat not of his heart but of something older, darker, and it blurred the world before him.
He saw double: in one vision, the revenant loomed, claw and bone, a corpse bound by a false shard. In the other, he saw a dream half-formed, shadows curled like eager hands, ready to coil into his palm, to devour, to make him whole.
His grip tightened on his sword hilt until his knuckles blanched. A ragged breath tore from his throat.
