The silence of the forest was a heavy, suffocating thing. After the chaos of shattering bone, the warbling shrieks of the Lanky ones, and the guttural roars of the Grey Monsters, the soft, rhythmic rustle of the silver-leafed trees felt like a mockery.
The air here was cooler, filtered through the dense canopy of ancient trees, but it still carried the faint scent of iron and necrotizing poison.
The girl, Kira, breathed heavily, her chest rattling like a broken bellows. The translucent feline legs that had allowed her to outrun death had long since dissolved, leaving her own limbs trembling with fatigue that went deeper than muscle and bone.
Every breath she took sounded like a struggle against a lung full of glass. It seemed like she had burned through her essence to carry a stranger through a nightmare, and the toll was etched into every ragged breath she took.
