The snow was no longer white.
It was soaked in crimson, melted in patches by the scorched, uneven heat still radiating from Ren's ruined body.
He lay sprawled in a broken sprawl at the center of a deep crater, steam rising off his skin where frost met flame.
The black and red armor he once wore like a second skin now hung in jagged, shattered pieces, cracked open along the ribs and shoulders like a broken exoskeleton.
The runes etched into its surface had dimmed to a lifeless gray, flickering weakly before fading completely.
His skin was now dangerously pale, and strange black cracks seemed to be slowly creeping across it, sapping away the last of his strength.
Such was the cost of borrowed power.
Blood seeped from a dozen deep wounds across his body—some fresh, some cauterized by his own corrupted flames.
His right arm was bent at an unnatural angle beneath him, bones clearly shattered.
One eye was swollen shut, and his lips were cracked, bleeding, and blackened with ash.
