The ground split open directly beneath the archway, grass and soil peeling back like something tearing free from a wound too long left unattended, and from the widening chasm rose a figure unlike anything we had encountered before.
It stood twice the height of any wolf among us, its form composed entirely of shifting light, silver and violet, and colours without names weaving together in constant, restless motion. Unlike the fragment we had fought days earlier, its shape held together with unsettling coherence, features almost recognizable as a face, almost recognizable as a voice, waiting just beneath the surface of its impossible form.
"That is not simply another fragment," Thessaly breathed, her expression a mixture of awe and genuine fear. "That is something far older."
The figure's
