The echo of the final punch did not merely fade; it convulsed. It rolled through the domain in overlapping waves of displaced air, bouncing off impossible geometries that should not have produced sound at all.
Beneath that dying rumble, the great fissure splitting the pulsing violet floor screamed in silence, spiderwebbing outward in slow, deliberate branches less like breaking stone and more like a malignant organism claiming territory.
Rex lay entombed in the center of the wreckage his own momentum had carved. What remained of him was a grotesque parody of human anatomy.
Through a jagged tear in his shirt, the pale, splintered edge of a rib punched outward through the skin, white and obscene against the crimson ruin of his chest.
Blood didn't merely trickle from his mouth; it flowed in a steady, rhythmic pulse, pooling beneath his jaw and spreading across the violet surface in a dark, viscous stain that refused to be absorbed, sitting atop the floor like spilled oil.
