The ruin still shook from the abyss's whisper—"the feast is not hunger, it is war." Dust fell in trembling sheets from the fractured arches as I clutched Dahlia tighter, her body limp but burning with a strange afterglow. The Scar writhed against my skin, alive, no longer mine. It pulsed like another heart, another will, beating beneath my flesh.
My arm convulsed, jerking like a limb under puppet-strings. Shadows spat from the Scar, chains twitching like broken limbs clawing at the ground. Each pulse was not pain anymore—it was command.
My wolf growled low in my skull, voice edged with fury and dread. This is no leash. It has crossed you. It takes orders from what lies below.
I could feel it—every throb, every lash, my body moved not for me but for something else. For him. The ancient pulse that groaned beneath the earth.
The Scar split open in light and black fire, its voice crawling out of my skin in a tongue that should never belong to mortal lips:
