The battle was over, but Damien had not won.
Not truly.
His feet barely touched the ground as Vel'kharn carried him across the shifting terrain, one massive claw cupped beneath Damien's torso like a cradle forged from thunder and bone.
The wind no longer whistled, it moaned. Every gust carried voices he couldn't silence, their tones familiar and foreign all at once. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear the blur from his vision, but it wasn't his eyes that had blurred, it was reality itself.
Faces flickered in the corners of his sight, not as illusions, but as lingering guilt, as memories warped by the sorrow-forged core now pulsing inside him.
One moment he saw Rage Monkey's laughing face, intact and full of life. The next, he saw it torn apart, teeth shattered, eyes pleading.
Then Jiang Xiao Yu, smiling with warmth that had once anchored him, but her lips were stitched shut now, her eyes hollow, her core shattered all over again.
