They were not friends, not family, not even acquaintances, but they shared the same destination.
That destination was overhead, within that rift, inside the mouths of those hungry souls.
Kane raised his head and shouted one final sentence at the rift. His voice was not loud, but every word drove into the ears of those around him like a nail.
"I'm already here. Are you coming or not?"
From within the rift came the hungry souls' reply: a deafening howl of hunger.
The howl erupted from the rift like a volcanic explosion, like a bursting tsunami, like ten thousand starving beasts roaring at once.
It shook the stone slabs of the altar and made the scraps of flesh atop the piles of meat twitch and bounce.
Rather than being afraid at the sound, the immortals erupted into even crazier cheers.
They lunged toward the rift like moths rushing into flame, like drowning men throwing themselves toward the far shore.
They rushed forward, fell, crawled back up, and rushed forward again.
They flung the severed limbs, broken arms, fingers, soles, eyeballs, teeth, chunks of flesh, and bone fragments in their hands into the air, toward the rift.
The flesh danced beneath the gray-white sky, tracing dark crimson arcs through the air.
Within the rift, the hungry souls' scarlet eyes shone like red lamps, densely embedded in that darkness.
They extended intangible claws, opened enormous intangible mouths, and pounced on the flying flesh.
When Malaka squeezed out of the rift, it was no longer the Malaka it had once been.
The fragments of rules within the passage had cut it apart again and again, like a butcher sawing meat with a dull blade—when it would not cut, he just dragged the blade back and forth.
Its soul body had originally been a