It was a terrifying, hallucinatory scene: the framework that sustained life had, in an instant, become a thornbush blooming from within.
The body was fixed in place, swollen and rigid, like a painted wooden carving. Dense growths inside it pushed up the surface, forming patches of dots that spread and darkened, with bulging, purplish bruises swelling between them.
At the moment the tension reached its limit, the skin burst through. The liquid that had long been pooling beneath it sprayed out in a mist, forming a thick, roiling curtain.
The misgrown spikes were cast across the curtain by the dying firelight. They seemed to keep extending, accompanied by a grating, intermittent screech like teeth grinding together.
The shadows of the Bone Spikes entered the eyes, and through humanity's innate capacity for empathy, passed the terror of shared suffering into the minds of those who saw them, piercing courage before it could even form, leaving it on the verge of shattering.
Any eyes that could stare down a sword's edge would still drift away involuntarily, instinctively avoiding the sight.
Yet the malicious source of the deathmaking had not even appeared. Like a collector unveiling their proudest prize, pulling back the curtain at the perfect moment and displaying it openly before their guests, it savored the shock of these mortal souls.
[Performative]
Only one pair of eyes never looked away, or rather, had never been fixed on the stage of this unveiling in the first place.
He had heard the footsteps before the actor took the stage. After the highly theatrical visual display, he had seen the mechanism behind it.
Something unreal and intangible, something existing in a dimension beyond the reach of ordinary senses, had touched that poor man at some point.
It wasn't still. It was a flute,