Thoren's horror reached a new height when he saw the ash tide appear above him.
It was there.
At the top of the undead Sanguine Vulture. A ceiling of churning gray death, waiting. It had not chased him but had outflanked him.
While he had been fleeing from the tide behind him, the sky itself had moved ahead, circling, cutting off his escape route.
Now it hung above him like an executioner's blade, and it was descending.
The vulture flew on, its hollow socket burning with the eerily soul fire fixed forward, unaware or uncaring of the doom above.
But Thoren saw it.
He saw the ash cloud gathering, thickening, preparing to descend. The same ash cloud that had devoured everything behind him.
The same howling, hungry mass of annihilation. And it was directly overhead.
His heart stopped.
For one frozen moment, he could not breathe.
He could not think.
He could not move.
