The five-mile incline leading up to the Citadel was a completely exposed, upward-sloping kill box of frozen black ash.
Ren stood at the base of the massive incline, his towering, two-hundred-and-thirty-pound frame casting a long, dark shadow over the scorched earth. The fierce, freezing wind howled down from the jagged northern peaks, whipping the ruined, blood-soaked shreds of his ash-grey hoodie around his dense, heavily armored torso. The ambient temperature was hovering in the single digits, but the massive, localized biological furnace burning in his chest, fueled by the Level 18 Abyssal Glutton core, kept his pale, iron-hardened skin flushed with volatile heat.
That heat was a beacon.
