Both man and the forgotten thing stared at one another. A silence deeper than the chaos around them. Something unspoken passed between them—something neither could name, yet both seemed to long for.
As Finn met its gaze, it was as if they saw straight through each other. A connection he couldn't explain, not to himself, not to anyone.
The creature's head resembled that of a hatchling bird, yet warped with human features. One half avian, one half man. Its eyes leaked thick fluid, yet the pupils remained disturbingly clear, almost too real—more real than Lysithea's ever were. Poor girl.
And its mouth… The bottom half was a baby bird's beak, but the upper half had been replaced with a warped human mouth. Slime-draped flesh clung stubbornly to the hybrid form, dripping but never falling away.
It looked like something dredged up from the cracks of memory itself—something the world had tried to forget.
