They kept coming back.
Every time Stephan sheared a limb from stone, the shattered pieces knit back together like a tide filling a hole. He'd hacked a fist clean off and watched stine reknit into knuckles. He'd gouged a breastplate down to the ribs and the carved armor flowed back like poured metal cooling into place. It was the kind of regeneration that felt obscene, unnatural, not repair but a will dragging itself back into shape.
He was breathing hard now, blood from a cut above his brow streaking down his temple and into his eye. Each inhalation seared the ribs that still throbbed where the statues had slammed him into the wall. He had burned souls twice already for that hot, impossible stitchwork inside his bones. He could feel the cost in his chest, something hollowing out, the hunger of his reserve clicking down like a counter.
