The rain didn't just fall now—it tilted. As if the sky itself leaned toward them, forcing every drop into their faces.
Kaela was the first to notice. "Uh… Jemil?" she said, squinting into the wall of rain. "That shadow… it's still growing."
Jemil's grip tightened on his sword. He could feel the vibrations through the soaked ground, slow and steady, like a heartbeat the size of a mountain.
The wives closed in around him, weapons drawn. Mirella planted her halberd in the mud, her jaw clenched.
"That's no vine," she muttered.
Lightning split the sky—
For a fraction of a second, they saw it.
A silhouette too wide to be a person. Its head nearly scraped the roiling clouds. Dozens—no, hundreds—of tendrils dangled from its hunched frame, each pulsing faintly with stormlight. And then, just as quickly, the flash ended, swallowing it back into the curtain of rain.
"What is that?" Liora's voice was low, her bowstring taut.
