The forest trembled beneath the weight of wings.
Shadows slid across, blotting out the stars, fifty hunters of nightmare, bound by blood-oath and gold glided effortlessly.
The Wyverns came first. Twenty-five scaled reapers, their sinewed bodies gleaming like wet iron beneath the moon. Their wings were vast, membranous sails, beating against the treetops. Spines ridged their backs like serrated blades, and from their fanged maws dripped venom that hissed where it struck the leaves. Their eyes burned with the dull red of banked embers — cold, intelligent and merciless.
Among them moved the Manananggals. Also twenty-five nightmare creatures in broken human form. Their torsos were split clean from the waist, entrails trailing like ropes of glistening fungus as they hovered on bat-black wing
