The fissure was not empty. A mass of fragmented flesh writhed within it, as though something were crawling inside.
The flesh was dark red, its surface covered in tiny buds of meat that constantly writhed, grew, and contracted, as if they possessed lives of their own.
Dark blue ghostfire burned in her eye sockets—not flickering flames, but steady, cold fire that burned like ice.
The flames shone upon her deathly pale skull, tinting the bone a faint blue.
She stared at the dense thicket of flesh thorns ahead, at the dark red layer of living flesh beyond it.
Serran raised a hand and swept it through the air. Her long, slender bone claws sliced through the air with a piercing shriek.
Pale black plague miasma spread from between her bone claws, like ink dropped into clear water, swiftly seeping in every direction.
Wherever the plague miasma passed, the dark red flesh thorn thickets rapidly blackened, withered, and shattered, as if all life had been drained from them.
The plague miasma did more than corrode flesh—it corroded living souls as well. Fragments of human souls trapped within the flesh thorns, not yet completely dead, let out soundless screams under its erosion before bursting like bubbles.
A sea of bones formed in an instant.
Deathly white bone spikes burst from the living flesh layer. They did not grow slowly, but shot violently from the ground as though launched, like countless blades stabbed upside down into the earth.
Some bone spikes were thick, others thin. The thickest were as wide as an adult's thigh, while the thinnest were like fingers.
They crisscrossed into a net, one resting atop another, layer upon layer, turning a vast stretch of the flesh thorn thicket into a forest of white bones.
Ghost energy coiled around the bone