The atmosphere of the Blood-Crag valley had become a viscous, vibrating soup of contradictory realities. Above, the sky was strangled by the Hive-Born—a swarm so dense it looked like a literal bruise on the universe. The sound was not a buzz, but a rhythmic, metallic thrum-click that resonated in the fillings of my teeth and the very marrow of my gold-veined bones. Below, the Iron-Clad ships of the Eastern Technocracy groaned against the black sands, their steam-vents shrieking like dying giants as Lucien's fire turned their boilers into bombs.
I was no longer a woman standing on solid ground. As I launched myself into the center of the swarm, I felt the Earth-Pillar's resonance trying to anchor me, while the Sanguine Fire in my blood demanded I consume the sky. The red-gold scales on my arms glowed with a lethal, incandescent heat, turning the air around me into a shimmering distortion.
Every Hive-Born locust I struck didn't just die; it unraveled.
