The violet sky didn’t just hang over the Emerald Throat; it throbbed. It was the color of a bruised soul, a deep, radioactive plum that turned the shadows into pools of ink. Arkan sat on a jagged outcrop of volcanic glass, his lungs drawing in air that felt like powdered diamonds—cold, sharp, and smelling of ozone. His left arm was no longer human. It was a shifting, translucent crystalline shard of bio-organic energy, the violet veins underneath his skin pulsing in a terrifying, synchronized rhythm with the flickering lights of the Navy's burning hulls in the harbor below.
"Status check, Boss," Riley rasped. She was standing ten paces behind him, leaning against a petrified mahogany tree. Her obsidian bow was slung over her shoulder, but her hand never strayed from the grip of her knife.
