The rain continued to fall in relentless, heavy sheets across the desolate pass, washing the remaining dark fluids from the jagged edges of Zeven's shadow claws as the corpse of Elder Kael slid quietly onto the muddy ground. The ancient stone gateway loomed ahead, its massive pillars bearing the deep, smoking scars of their intense physical and ideological conflict. Zeven stood motionless for a brief moment, his chest heaving as his internal systems finalized the absorption of the tactical commander's life force, allowing his natural human filters to completely suppress the remnants of the wolf deity's destructive frenzy. Around his boots, the shattered fragments of Kael's premium laboratory armor lay strewn across the wet silt, the synthetic titanium plating fractured into useless shards
