The hunters surged.
Blades flashed in the mist, their steel whispering like fangs in the dark. The shadows moved with merciless precision, closing in from all sides, jaws of a net woven tighter with each step. The forest itself seemed to recoil, branches bowing under the weight of inevitability.
Leo's knees buckled. His sword slipped in his grasp as if it too feared the thing beating inside him. His chest burned with a molten weight, every breath a jagged rasp that tore at his throat. He clutched his ribs with trembling hands, but the fragment was already awake, already screaming.
They are chains, the voice snarled, reverberating not only in his skull but in his bones, his blood, the marrow of his being. Shatter them. Shatter all.
The moment snapped.
