We rushed inside the ruins and I looked around frantically and saw two still shapes wrapped in shrouds of white linen, stretched side by side on a slab of black stone, while a man in a long black cloak stood over them, his back was to us, pouring a thick, iridescent liquid from an obsidian vial over my mate and Barret. It coiled down the bodies like serpentine smoke, sinking into the fabric.
Lightning, unnatural, wrong, it ripped from the sky, not in a single bolt, but in jagged, writhing threads. They struck the cloaked man and the two bodies, not burning, but weaving, stitching light into flesh. The ground trembled.
And the man… he didn’t scream. He laughed. A dry, rattling sound, like bones in a sack. He raised his arms, and for a heartbeat, the shrouds twitched.
''Too late, dog,''
