The Flux Core pulsed behind him, rhythm steady as a war drum. Ether screamed as it was sucked into the vortex, a river of invisible energy that tugged at his bones and begged his blood to follow.
The air was saturated with the scent of ozone and decay, thick enough to cling to his tongue like wet ash. Every breath he took felt borrowed.
Then it stepped out of the trees.
It was no hallucination. No whisper of madness or trick lights of flux.
The monster was real.
Seven feet tall. Hunched. Its back arched like a drawn bow, and its spine jutted through skin that looked like cracked leather stretched over broken stone.
Its chest bore a jagged, glowing scar shaped like a spiral — not inked, but seared into its flesh as if the zone itself had branded its chosen. The scar pulsed faintly with the same cadence as the Flux Core behind it, glowing like molten metal, throbbing in sync with the flux's hunger.
