Hopefully, she wouldn't come out of this scarier than she already was.
Zarah's screams tore through the clearing, raw and ragged, as the green aura poured from her in thick waves, wrapping her body like a cocoon of shifting light.
Her frame convulsed beneath it, every muscle straining as though being reforged in fire.
"Aaaargh!"
The cry cracked into something closer to a sob, and my chest tightened.
The sound wasn't just pain; it was suffering, sharp enough to make me want to move.
For a heartbeat, I almost stepped forward, almost reached out to hold her, to ground her against the storm she was trapped in.
But I stopped myself. I knew better.
There was nothing I could do to ease it.
I'd seen this before with Narg, watched him thrash and burn through the agony of his own evolution, and I had learned then that no outside hand could soften the process.
The only thing I could do now was wait.
The transformation pressed on, relentless.
