The claw grips the edge of the rift. The sound is wet and grating, like bone scraping stone. Silver light pours along the curved talons, dripping in thin streams as if the sky itself is bleeding. The claw tightens. The rift stretches wider.
A body follows. Twisted. Shifting. Growing.
The creature pulls itself through the tear in the sky one piece at a time. Its limbs are too long, bending in ways that defy the shape of anything that ever lived on earth. Its spine twists, expanding and contracting as silver light pulses under its skin. It looks half shadow, half starfire, and wholly wrong.
The forest trembles beneath us. Somewhere far beyond the trees, wolves across the region begin to howl in terror. Their voices rise and blend into one piercing chorus that shakes the ground. I feel the
