Chapter 11: Fangs, Fur, and a Good Girl - 1
The Devourlands didn't have roads. Only trails of torn trees, cratered soil, and the bones of things that used to roar.
Rein stepped carefully around a set of massive claw marks etched into a stone, still steaming.
Wind, dry and bitter, scraped across the jagged plains and kicked up ash that clung to his hair, his throat, his tongue.
The sky overhead was a sickly red-gray, never quite dusk, never quite dawn. No stars. No sun. Just a constant, dull glow—like the world itself was quietly smoldering.
Rein stumbled over a ridge of cracked black stone and winced as his foot caught on a hidden bone shard.
He barely kept his balance.
"Lovely," he muttered, brushing dust from his leg. "Whole damn continent to walk into, and I pick the part that looks like a dying god's spit bucket."
The wound on his palm had scabbed over, but throbbed with every heartbeat.
He adjusted the stolen satchel across his shoulder—the one Asmodra hadn't taken back—and checked its contents again:
A half-eaten strip of dried meat.
A pouch of crushed nerveleaf powder.