🛡️
The shaman's words died in its throat as the grey-robed figure's attention shifted away from it entirely. Those unsettling eyes—too knowing for someone who looked barely eighteen—found Rhys instead. The sudden focus felt like standing in the path of an avalanche, the weight of that gaze pressing against him with almost physical force.
"His life is yours," the figure said, nodding toward the creature pinned beneath his blade. His voice carried the same conversational tone he might use to discuss the weather. "Your friend Jorik is dead. Petra is traumatized. Your spear is broken."
Rhys's hand instinctively clenched at his side, finding only empty air where his father's spear should have been. He saw the broken shaft in the debris. Three generations of Blackwood legacy, he thought, the words like ash in his mind. Gone.
"Your story, as written, ends here in failure and death."
