(... continued)
As the world around split itself open the storm screamed louder.
The shrine buckled.
The light bled.
And then…
The creature howled at the loss. At the loss of Freya.
It wasn't a sound of rage alone. It was grief.
It was something too grotesquely primal.
The sound rippled through every crack in the void.
Her back arched. Her head snapped towards the storm where Freya's tiny body spun away, vanishing into the collapsing rift.
" Grrrrrr…"
It wasn't a voice. It was a shiver of sound, a vibration that made the chains around her neck dissolve into ash.
Velor staggered backward, eyes wide, unblinking at Niva. "Stay back…! Don't…"
The creature was listening to nothing.
Her form convulsed. The slick red sheen of her flesh shimmered, shifted. Veins writhed across her arms like serpents alive beneath her skin. Her ribs cracked open in jagged lines of a similar glow that Autumn and her children displayed…but different.
