They all looked at me as I emerged from the gaping maw of the cave, a solitary figure stepping from the abyss into the pale, pre-dawn light. My whole body was a canvas of crimson, the dark, viscous blood of the Goblin King and his horde clinging to my clothes, my skin, my hair. It was not the clean, honorable blood of a warrior, but the thick, cloying gore of a butcher.
Layla's team, having just arrived, froze. Their expressions, once a mixture of grim determination and weary concern, shifted to ones of pure, unadulterated shock.
"Ashen," Layla said, her voice a sharp, cutting note of alarm as she took an involuntary step back. "What happened? Why do you look like that?"
I didn't respond. I couldn't. The words were trapped in my throat, choked by the bile and the horror of what I had just done, of what I had just become.
