Blood and ash mingled with the silent air as Sienna stood amidst the wreckage, eyes hollow, skin gleaming with remnants of her transformation, and hair whipping wildly in the wind.
Kael and Darius stood behind her, battle-worn but alert, their hearts not yet settled. The fight had ended. But the war... the real war, they were beginning to see, had only just begun.
And then it happened.
The sky which was once vast and silent, rippled.
Kael was the first to sense it. "Sienna... do you feel that?"
A pressure unlike anything before pressed against their bones, not from around them, but within them. It was like something ancient had stirred, as if the battle had awakened a slumbering presence watching all along.
Sienna turned slowly. Her pupils narrowed. "Yes," she whispered. "Something is coming."
No. Someone.
