Simba’s roar shook dust from fractured ceilings. Broken blades skittered across stones where they lay. Deep within the castle’s wounded layers, on staircases choked with rubble, in halls veiled by settling plaster clouds, Balisarda’s surviving soldiers froze. Heads snapped toward the sound’s origin. Torchlight caught wide pupils in grime-streaked faces. Sky-glow through shattered vaults reflected in unblinking eyes.

  Weapons rose—notched steel, splintered hafts, shields crusted with dried gore. They fell. Once. Twice. A third time. Metal kissed stone. Wood met flagstone. Impact points bloomed with powdered mortar. A rhythm hardened, precise as a blacksmith’s strike.

  A raw scrape of voice cut from a lower gallery’s shadows:

  “Stone breaks!”

  From a scorched hall above, a dozen throats seized the words, blades rising and falling:

  “Stone breaks!”

  More voices wove through broken archways, climbing stairwells, spilling from arrow slits:

  “Stone breaks!”

  The first voice lashed out, sharp as a whip:

  “Iron bends!”

  A hundred weapons answered, rising and falling as one:

  “Iron bends!”

  “Flesh tears!” the shadow-voice ripped.

  “FLESH TEARS!” the legion roared. Fractured masonry hummed.

  Silence. One collective lift and drop of weapons. A single beat shaking dust motes loose.

  Then:

  “SIRE!” Weapons plunged.

  “BALISARDA!” Steel struck stone.

  “GIVES!” Wood cracked on impact.

  “THE!” Shields slammed downward.

  “ORDER!” A final, unified crash echoed in hollow spaces.

  Heavier silence. The air thickened like clotting blood.

  The shadow-voice ground lower, grating:

  “The Lion!” Weapons fell.

  “Of Fury!” Metal bit stone.

  “Walks!” Hafts vibrated in clenched fists.

  “Among!” Dust plumed from impact points.

  “The Ruin!” A shockwave of sound punched upward.

  The final declaration erupted:

  “SIMBA! HUNTS! AND! THE! CASTLE! FEEDS!”

  A hundred blades struck the floor. Stone shivered.

  Silence. Then, movement in a collapsed armory. A gauntleted fist slammed against a breastplate. A single, cracked whisper:

  “Simba…”

  Above, three spear butts struck a fractured balustrade in perfect sync. A dozen voices seized it:

  “Simba!”

  In the main hall below, a hundred weapons lifted as one. Muscles coiled. Steel and wood and iron plunged downward. The scarred floor trembled. The name tore free:

  “SIMBA!”

  Weapons rose. Fell. Stone groaned.

  “SIMBA!”

  Arms strained. Blades dropped. Dust sifted from vaulted ceilings.

  “SIMBA!”

  Knuckles whitened. Shields impacted. A loose coping stone clattered down a distant stairwell.

  “SIMBA!”

  The rhythm became the castle’s heartbeat. Weapons rising. Falling. Names shouted into swirling grit. Flagstones pulsed under boots. Dust streamed like water from cracks overhead. Small stones bounced on ledges.

  Seventh descent. Weapons froze at the apex. Mouths snapped shut. Only the vibration in the stones remained, humming against boot soles. Dust motes hung suspended. Every head turned, necks craning toward the shattered heights where the roar had begun. Weapons lowered to guard position. Fingers tightened on grips. A hundred breaths held, misting cold air.

  The stones remembered the name. The soldiers faced its source.

  The Grand Hallway | Aftermath of the Roar

  Plaster dust sifted down like grey snow onto the wreckage-strewn flags. Mephistopheles swayed, his mangled helm tilted towards the distant, fading echoes of the soldiers' chant. Blood dripped from a rent in his obsidian greave, adding a slow tap… tap… tap to the settling silence. He shifted his weight, the grind of armored boots on grit loud in the pause. His volcanic gaze, visible beneath the helm’s fractured edge, fixed on Simba standing tall across the debris field.

  A raw, metallic rasp scraped from Mephistopheles’ throat, echoing faintly off the scarred pillars: “I hate the name Balisarda.” He spat a globule of blood-dark phlegm onto the stones near his boot. It landed with a wet splat. His head tilted, the gesture sharp, challenging. “However… answer me.” He raised Bloodshed slightly, its dark edge catching the fractured light. “What the hell is everyone cheering for, Mister Lion?”

  Simba stood rigid, cradling his monstrous, furred hand against his torso. Blood streamed freely from the deep cleft between the claw-tipped fingers, soaking the dark leather over his gut, each crimson drop hitting stone with a soft, rhythmic counterpoint to Mephistopheles’ drip. Dust matted his molten mane. The scent of his own blood – sharp, coppery – warred with ozone and the pervasive grit. His orange-brown eyes, slits of molten fury, didn’t waver from Mephistopheles.

  A low rumble started deep in Simba’s chest, vibrating the dust motes near his boots. It wasn’t a growl of pain, but something colder, more deliberate. His lips peeled back, revealing lengthened teeth, wet and sharp. He took a single, heavy step forward. The flagstone cracked under his boot.

  “Why…” Simba’s voice emerged, a low vibration resonating through the charged air, thick with contained power. He flexed the fingers of his ruined hand; knuckles popped, claws scraped stone, the cleft opening like a wound. “…let me answer you.”

  He stopped, his transformed silhouette blocking the light from a shattered window. His gaze swept the ruined hall – the shattered benches, the chipped pillar, the gaping hole in the floor below – as if surveying a domain.

  “A lion…” He inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring wide, drawing in the scents of blood, dust, and fear. The rumble deepened. “…is called king.” His clawed hand opened slightly, palm upwards, the furred valley glistening wetly. “Not…” His voice dropped, emphasizing the word. “…because it’s the biggest.” He gestured vaguely upwards and outwards with his chin, implying something vast, unstoppable. “The elephant… lumbers.” His tone held a predator’s dismissive contempt for mere bulk.

  He took another deliberate step. Dust plumed around his boot. “Not…” His head tilted, mane shifting like molten gold. “…because it’s the fastest.” A flash of yellowed fang showed in a humorless approximation of a smile. “The cheetah… flees.” The word was spat, laced with disdain for fleeting speed.

  He paused, close enough now for Mephistopheles to smell the wet fur and iron radiating from him. Simba tapped his temple with a claw tip, the gesture slow, deliberate. A bead of blood welled where the point touched skin. “Not…” His molten eyes locked onto Mephistopheles’ volcanic gaze. “…because it’s the smartest.” His voice dripped with scorn. “The chimp… scrabbles in the trees.”

  Simba lowered his clawed hand. He stood utterly still for a heartbeat, the only movement the steady drip of his blood onto stone and the subtle expansion of his chest beneath the torn leather. The air crackled, saturated with the ozone stink of his power and the raw, animal presence he exuded.

  Simba stopped moving. Less than ten paces separated them now. His transformed body radiated heat, warping the air. Orange-brown eyes, molten slits, bored into the volcanic gaze within Mephistopheles’ fractured helm. Silence thickened, saturated with the iron tang of blood, the choking dust, and the angry crackle of ozone. Only the steady percussion marked the passing moments: Tap… Tap… Tap… Simba’s blood striking the cold stone by his clawed foot.

  Then, Simba’s head lifted. The molten mane flowed back like a retreating tide of gold. His ruined right hand, the furred pillars framing its deep cleft, twitched. A fresh bead swelled, dark and heavy, at the wound’s edge. It hung, suspended, catching the fractured light.

  He leaned forward. Not a step, but a tectonic shift of weight, infinitesimal yet immense. The intensity in his eyes didn't just flare; it ignited, casting predatory shadows across the fur of his own face. The deep rumble that began in his chest didn't just vibrate the grit beneath Mephistopheles’ boots; it resonated in the marrow of the broken stones, a subsonic growl that was the castle’s foundation groaning. The hanging blood droplet fell.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Tap.

  The sound coincided with the first word, delivered with the crushing finality of a tomb sealing:

  “It's…”

  Another droplet swelled. The air pressure spiked, pressing against Mephistopheles’ armor like deep ocean currents. Dust motes ceased their dance, pinned in the thickening silence.

  “…the shadow…” Simba’s voice wasn’t loud. It was dense, layered with the guttural truth of the savannah and the crushing weight of witnessed dominion. It spoke not of a quality, but of an immutable law, as fundamental as gravity. The word "shadow" implies not darkness, but the inescapable presence that alters everything it touches – the hush that falls on the plain, the herd freezing mid-drink, the instinctive yielding before the inevitable.

  The second droplet fell.

  Tap.

  “…it casts…” His gaze, unblinking, held Mephistopheles. It wasn’t a look of challenge, but of revelation. He wasn't explaining; he was unveiling the architecture of the world. "Casts" suggested an active, pervasive force emanating from the core of being, shaping the space and wills around it, as undeniable as the sun casting light.

  A third droplet formed, trembling. Simba’s transformed chest barely moved. The heat radiating from him intensified, drying the blood on his fur into dark scabs.

  “…upon…” He paused, letting the preposition hang. It pointed not just to subjects, but to the fabric of existence around the lion – the grass that bends, the wind that stills, the very fear that becomes a tangible thing, a force others move within, not against. It spoke of the collective breath held, the instinctive obedience born not of logic, but of primal recognition.

  The third droplet plunged.

  Tap.

  “…all. ” The final word landed. Not "others." All. Absolute. Unqualified. It encompassed the cheering soldiers far below, the trembling prey, the wary challenger standing before him now – Mephistopheles himself, bound within the gravity of Simba’s existence. It was the totality of the lion’s reign, the silent, terrifying imposition of order simply by being. The blood pooling at his feet wasn't just loss; it was the ink signing the decree.

  The deep resonance faded, leaving only the ringing silence and the phantom vibration in the stones. The air remained thick, charged. Simba didn't move. The declaration hung, heavier than the castle stones, the answer to his own riddle etched not in words, but in the palpable, suffocating weight of his presence – the shadow made manifest.

  The final syllable of Simba’s declaration – "all" – still vibrated in the charged air, the phantom weight of it pressing down like the castle’s own despair. Mephistopheles’ volcanic eyes narrowed behind his fractured helm, gauntlets gripping tight on Bloodshed’s hilt. The pool of Simba’s blood by his clawed foot spread slowly, dark and glistening.

  Movement blurred. Simba simply was there. No roar, no wind-up. One moment, a statue radiating heat and primal certainty across ten paces of ruin. The next, tawny fur and corded muscle filled Mephistopheles’ vision. Simba’s transformed forearm, thick as a timber beam and matted with coarse hair, drove forward with piston force. It slammed into the right side of Mephistopheles’ obsidian helmet with a sound like a mountain cracking. Fracture lines splintered instantly across the helm’s surface.

  Reflex screamed through Mephistopheles’ pain. Bloodshed lashed upwards in a desperate, instinctive arc as his head snapped sideways from the blow. The dark blade met the deep, freshly opened furrow across Simba’s lower abdomen – the wound inflicted moments before. It bit deep, slicing through dense muscle and fur with a wet, tearing resistance that vibrated up Mephistopheles’ arm.

  Simba didn’t flinch. His forward momentum didn’t falter. The impact of his forearm strike transferred its entire force through the helmet, through Mephistopheles’ neck, and into his body. Mephistopheles’ boots left the ground. He became a projectile of dented armor and shocked defiance, hurtling backwards. He struck an old, tapestry-covered wall. The stone cracked beneath the impact. Dust and shredded fabric exploded outwards. He slid down the fractured stone, boots scraping for purchase, but remained upright, leaning heavily against the ruined wall, Bloodshed held low and trembling in his grip.

  Simba stood where the collision had occurred. Fresh blood, dark and vital, welled freely from the deep crosswise gash across his abdomen, soaking into the tawny fur and darkening the remnants of his leather jacket. It streamed down his legs, adding to the pool at his feet. He looked down at the wound, then back up at Mephistopheles. His molten gold mane was undisturbed. His orange-brown eyes held no pain, no surprise, only the cold, focused intensity of a predator assessing prey that had drawn blood. He took a single, deliberate step backwards. Not a stagger. A measured retreat, creating precisely six feet of blood-slicked stone between them. His clawed feet ground pulverized plaster into the gore beneath them.

  Silence, thick with the iron scent of blood and ozone, stretched for a fractured second. Mephistopheles pushed himself off the wall, a groan trapped within his helm. Simba remained immobile, a fountain of crimson welling from his torso, his breathing deep and even, unfaltering.

  Then, ignition. No signal, no cry. Both figures launched forward simultaneously. Mephistopheles, driven by vengeance and desperation, a dark comet trailing blood from his helment new fissures. Simba, a golden avalanche radiating terrifying purpose, ignoring the river of his own life staining the stones behind him.

  They closed the distance in a blur. Fists flew. Mephistopheles’ gauntleted fist, wrapped around Bloodshed’s hilt, aimed a brutal hook for Simba’s jaw. Simba’s own fist, the monstrous hybrid of fur, hide, and curved claws framing its deep cleft, met it head-on. Not a block. A collision.

  Fist smashed against fist. Bone, metal, and bestial power impacted. A shockwave of pure force radiated outwards, stirring dust devils in the debris. The air cracked.

  For a suspended instant, they were locked, knuckle to knuckle, force against force. Simba’s arm, rooted in tectonic strength, didn’t yield. Mephistopheles’ arm trembled visibly within his armored gauntlet, the muscles beneath screaming. Then, with terrifying inevitability, Simba pressed forward. His arm extended, a piston driven by unearthly will. Mephistopheles’ entire body, braced against the impossible pressure, began to slide backwards. His boots scraped trenches through blood and dust, unable to find purchase against the raw, unflinching power flowing from the Lion of Fury. The locked fists were the fulcrum; Mephistopheles was the lever being forced inexorably back.

  The relentless pressure flowing from Simba’s monstrous fist forced Mephistopheles backwards, boots carving furrows through blood and dust. Mephistopheles’ arm trembled within its gauntlet, Bloodshed’s hilt a desperate anchor against the crushing force. Simba’s molten gaze held no strain, only predatory focus, the deep gash across his abdomen a crimson waterfall ignored.

  Then, fluid as a hunting cat shifting its weight, Simba’s balance transferred. His left leg, encased in dark denim stretched taut over corded muscle, snapped upwards. Not a wild kick, but a piston-driven strike. The reinforced toe of his boot connected with brutal precision against Mephistopheles’ armored waist, just below the ribs.

  Impact shuddered through the obsidian plates. Mephistopheles’ torso jerked sideways. The arm braced against Simba’s fist sagged, defenses fracturing for a splintered second. It was all the opening Simba required. His pressing right fist, knuckles like fur-covered stone, disengaged and blurred forward. It hammered into the fractured center of Mephistopheles’ helm with concussive finality.

  The world dissolved into fractured light and ringing silence for Mephistopheles. His body tore free from the locked position, hurled backwards like a discarded ragdoll. He tumbled end over end down the ruined hallway, skidding across debris, momentum threatening to slam him into the far wall.

  Instinct screamed through the disorientation. Bloodshed, still clutched in a death grip, stabbed downwards. The dark tip shrieked against the stone, biting deep into a flagstone joint. Sparks fountained. Leverage. Mephistopheles wrenched his body around the anchored blade, muscles screaming, transforming uncontrolled flight into a violent, skidding pivot. He came to a shuddering halt, knees bent, one hand white-knuckled on Bloodshed’s hilt, the other braced on the scarred floor. He faced the direction he’d been thrown.

  Directly behind him, set into the hallway’s inner wall, was the small, high rectangle of a closed hopper window. Thick, warped glass, smeared with years of grime, revealed only a sliver of the bustling kitchen beyond: the curve of a copper pot suspended over a blue flame, a flash of steam, a glimpse of frantic movement.

  No hesitation. Simba stood immobile down the hall, a golden statue wreathed in his own blood mist, watching. Mephistopheles shoved himself upright, tearing Bloodshed free in a shower of stone chips. He didn’t look back at Simba. He coiled, muscles bunching beneath battered armor, and launched himself backwards. Shoulders first, a missile of vengeance and shattered obsidian, he hit the hopper window.

  The thick glass exploded inward with a crystalline shower. Wooden framing splintered. Mephistopheles crashed through the jagged opening, tumbling amidst glittering shards. He struck the solid surface of a heavy oak kitchen table laden with preparation. Bowls of chopped roots and herbs, platters of raw meat, ceramic jars of spices, and a steaming tureen of broth flew in all directions. Clay shattered. Liquids splashed across flagstones. Vegetables and meat pulp smeared across the table’s surface and the floor beneath.

  Mephistopheles landed hard on his back atop the ruined feast, the table groaning under the impact. Shards of pottery and glass littered his armor. The air reeked of spilled broth, crushed herbs, and raw meat. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, shaking glass from his fractured visor.

  His volcanic gaze swept the sudden chaos. Steam billowed from overturned pots. A blue flame guttered under a spilled pot. And there, frozen mid-step near a massive stone oven, stood one of Balisarda Sumernor’s female cooks for the seventh floor. Her hands, clutching a wooden spoon slick with sauce, hovered uselessly. Her eyes, wide with shock above a flour-dusted apron, locked onto the armored demon who had just exploded into her domain, crushing the meal she’d been preparing. The spoon slipped from her fingers, clattering onto the sauce-smeared floor.

  Mephistopheles’ gaze fixed on her. Not with surprise, but with the cold, assessing focus of a predator finding unexpected prey amidst the wreckage.

  Mephistopheles lay sprawled atop the ruined kitchen table, glass shards glittering like malignant stars across his obsidian armour. Pulped vegetables and splattered broth steamed around him. His volcanic gaze remained fixed on the frozen cook – a young woman with dark, flour-dusted braids escaping her cap, knuckles white around the dropped wooden spoon. Shock radiated from her wide, dark eyes.

  He pushed himself upright, shards skittering off his pauldrons. The obsidian plates groaned. "Hey," his voice scraped out, raw from battle and dust, cutting through the hiss of spilled broth on the hot stove. "Can I speak to you?"

  The woman’s mouth opened. A raw, piercing shriek tore from her throat, echoing off the close stone walls of the small cooking alcove.

  Reflexively, Mephistopheles lunged forward, not with menace, but haste. His heavy gauntlet clamped over her mouth, muffling the scream instantly. Her eyes bulged wider, breath huffing hot and frantic against the cold metal pressed to her lips. He leaned in, his fractured helm close to her ear, voice a low, urgent rasp barely audible over her panicked breaths.

  "Listen," he hissed. "You're in the kitchen section. One cook only." His free gauntlet gestured sharply towards the thick stone wall separating them from the main kitchen sounds – distant clatter, shouted orders. Then he pointed to the only exit: heavy, translucent plastic strips hanging in the doorway, blurring the shapes and movement beyond. "One entrance. Plastic strips. Other side? Other chefs." He tightened the pressure infinitesimally, not to hurt, but to emphasise. "Please. Don’t create noise. Noise brings them in here."

  Under his gauntlet, she made frantic, muffled sounds. "Mmmph! Mmmph!" Her shoulders jerked, trying to pull away.

  Mephistopheles froze. He stared at his gauntlet covering her mouth, then back at her terrified eyes, realisation dawning. "Oh." The word was flat, almost comical in its sudden awkwardness. "Shit. I forgot. Still covering your mouth." He pulled his gauntlet away as if the metal had grown suddenly hot.

  Tiana gasped, staggering back a step, one hand flying to her lips. She drew in deep, shuddering breaths, staring at the armoured figure dripping broth and vegetable pulp onto her floor. "What," she managed, voice trembling but clear, "do you want?"

  Mephistopheles shifted his weight, glass crunching under his boot. He looked down at his battered armour, the dents, the scratches, the places where obsidian had cracked revealing glimpses of stained underpadding. "I'd like someone," he stated, his tone incongruously matter-of-fact, "to check on my body. See whether I'm okay."

  Tiana blinked. She looked from his imposing, battle-ravaged form to the scattered carrots and shattered tureen, then back to his fractured visor. Her initial terror warred with sheer disbelief. "So," she said slowly, flour dust puffing from her apron as she gestured around the cooking carnage, "you come to a cook... for medical help?"

  Mephistopheles was silent for a long moment. His shoulders slumped slightly, a minute gesture lost in the bulk of his armour. "Well," he muttered, the word scraping out, "fuck it." He looked away, towards the plastic strips, avoiding her bewildered gaze. "I have no good excuse." A pause. His next words were quieter, tinged with something unfamiliar. "I don't know how to communicate with others well. I usually... locked everyone away. From me." He finally looked back at her, the volcanic glow within his helm dimmed. "So. I have been... lonely."

  A sound escaped Tiana. Not a scream. Not a sob. A startled, breathy hiccup of laughter. It was quickly stifled behind her floury hand, but her eyes crinkled at the corners despite the lingering fear. "Hehe," she breathed, shaking her head. "You're... funny." She lowered her hand, studying him with newfound curiosity. "What's your name?"

  "Mephistopheles," he replied, the name sounding strangely formal amidst the kitchen wreckage. "How about you?"

  "Well," she said, smoothing her apron, a semblance of composure returning, "my name is Tiana." She took a tentative step closer, peering up at the cracked obsidian hiding his face. "However... I like to ask you a question."

  Mephistopheles tilted his head, the movement stiff. "Well, Tiana," he rumbled. "What would you like to ask?"

  Tiana's gaze swept over him again – the deep gouges in his armour, the glass embedded in joints, the sheer impossible presence of him standing amidst her ruined kitchen. Her voice dropped to a whisper, filled with genuine, wide-eyed astonishment. "How... How are you alive?"

  Mephistopheles stood amidst the wreckage of Tiana’s kitchen, broth steaming on his shattered greaves, glass glittering like ice in the fractures of his obsidian armour. Tiana’s whispered question – "How are you alive?" – hung in the herb-scented, blood-tinged air. The answer was etched into his very form, a brutal ledger of violence paid in flesh and bone.

  Sixty thousand souls had barred his path in the castle’s churning courtyard. He had waded through that sea, leaving five hundred and eighty-five swordsmen and sixty-seven archers still and cold on the stones behind him, a grim tide mark of his passage. The castle doors, massive things of iron-bound oak, had yielded not to siege engines, but to his body becoming the projectile, hurled through them by Aham’s final, desperate thrust.

  Aham. Ninety minutes of clashing steel and spraying blood. The ghost of Aham’s katana lived on: a ragged canyon carved above Mephistopheles’ right eyebrow, weeping a slow, persistent crimson tear that traced the curve of his fractured cheekplate. Twin lines of fire still burned between his shoulder blades where Aham’s blades had pierced brigandine and muscle, tearing deep. A third, deeper agony pulsed low in his abdomen, a legacy of steel finding the narrow gap in his armour, thrusting into yielding flesh. And the doors… he remembered the thunderous impact, the world dissolving into splinters.

  Deimos had been next. Sixty-Six minutes of brutal efficiency. Deimos lived, but left souvenirs: a throbbing, misaligned ache deep in Mephistopheles’ neck where a punch had compromised bone; a fleeting, terrifying numbness that had stolen the strength from his limbs mid-swing; a deep, sickening bruise blooming across his lower back like a rotten flower, radiating pain with every breath. The imprint of his spine remained dusted onto a section of corridor wall, a grotesque bas-relief created by impact. He’d tasted mortar, felt stone yield, over and over, as walls became mere inconveniences.

  Consciousness had fled him briefly, violently – not from Deimos’s fists, but from the sky falling. A sword, dropped or hurled from some unseen height, had found his helmet like divine retribution. The detonation within that confined space had snuffed his awareness like a candle. Seconds lost in utter blackness.

  Awakening brought Otaktay. Ten minutes of searing hell. Otaktay lay dead, but his final act was a curse etched into Mephistopheles’ being. The cuirass protecting his chest had not just been damaged; it had fused. Molten metal and superheated lining had bonded with cooked skin, a permanent, agonising carapace. Every breath was a ragged gasp through scorched lungs, the air itself feeling like ground glass. The flesh of his sword hand was a ruin of blisters and weeping crimson, second-degree burns mocking his grip on Bloodshed. Deeper still, a wrongness hummed within his cells, a disruption like static in his veins, a fundamental violation of his body’s order.

  And now, Simba. The Lion of Fury had sculpted his own additions to the ruin. Mephistopheles’ helmet was a testament to repeated, savage impacts: buckled and deformed from an uppercut that had slammed his head back with whiplash force; fractured and webbed with cracks from Simba’s piston-forearm strike. Concussive trauma fogged his vision, the world swimming and doubling, a constant reminder of his skull rattling within its metal cage, dragged across unforgiving stone. Simba’s fist had found the centre of his breastplate, the force buckling the fused metal inwards, stealing his breath. A knee, driven like a siege ram into his gut, had yielded the sickening, internal crunch of ribs surrendering.

  To any observer – like Tiana, her flour-dusted hands trembling – the figure before her was not a warrior. It was a corpse denied the grave. The untreated wounds wept freely. Blood, old and new, crusted black or flowed bright, matted fur lining where it had not fused to armour, streaked the battered obsidian plates. The stench of burnt flesh, old sweat, fresh blood, and spilled broth clung to him. The sheer, impossible defiance of his stance – upright, conscious, speaking – was a blasphemy against the carnage inscribed upon him. Every injury screamed its existence, a cacophony of ruin that answered Tiana's question with silent, terrible evidence.