The Roar That Woke the Dead

The Dreamspawn did not move.

But the group shifted now, shaking free from the fog that had begun to veil their minds. A sickly lethargy clawed at their limbs, fighting against the urgency they all knew should be rising. Their nerves twitched. Hands found hilts. Magic sparked faintly at fingertips.

They were still breathing.

Still fighting.

That meant Sloth had not won.

Yet.

The creature—the avatar, the fragment, the thing—sat unmoving, its gaze not truly fixed on them, more like it was aware of their presence in the way one might register a leaf falling across the room. Dismissively. Weightlessly.

But their tension broke that stillness. Like a ripple across still water. The pressure in the room shifted. The scar pulsed. The massive exposed heart twitched, its beat thickening.

Junen raised her shield. Wren and Deker stepped into casting positions. Terron rolled his shoulders and gripped the hilt of his hammer. Maia's expression turned focused. Koda narrowed his eyes, centering his stance.

"We move on it," he said quietly. "Now. Before it can—"

And then the world screamed.

It did not begin slowly.

It did not build.

It detonated.

A primal, unhinged war cry tore through the air from the edge of the city—no word, no language, no reason. Just a raw, soul-rending howl of pure fury.

It hit them like a wave of fire and blood.

Every member of the group staggered.

Junen fell to one knee, eyes wide, shield up but trembling. Wren dropped her focus, clutching at her ears, teeth clenched in a silent scream. Deker collapsed backward against the wall, a burst of flame instinctively crackling around him as if to burn the fear away. Thessa froze mid-step, shaking, breath short.

Even Terron gasped, his confident posture breaking as his eyes flicked toward the wall they had passed hours ago.

And Maia—

She stumbled, caught by Koda's hand, eyes glazed with sudden panic. Her breath came in shallow gasps.

Koda felt it too.

Not just noise.

Fear.

Not the fear of battle. Not the fear of death.

The fear of something wrong coming too fast, too loud, too real.

His hands trembled.

His vision tunneled.

His instincts screamed to run.

And still, the roar echoed.

It did not fade.

It built, reverberating through the streets, shattering the illusion of stillness Delrest had worn like a shroud.

And across the room—

The Dreamspon stirred.

Not entirely.

But enough.

Its head—just its head—turned slightly toward the sound. The movement so small it barely disturbed the folds of its resting form. Its dull, empty gaze blinked once, as though it, too, had heard something it had not expected.

The group hadn't moved.

Couldn't move.

Because something else was coming.

And whatever it was—

Even Sloth was paying attention.

The roar still echoed when the impact came.

It was like a mountain collapsing—like the bones of the world snapped beneath something that refused to be slowed. The eastern wall of Delrest exploded in a shockwave of shattered stone and dust, a plume rising into the sky as whole sections of the city trembled under the force.

And then—

Another crash.

A house collapsed nearby, timbers and tiles flying outward like shrapnel.

Screams—no, not human—of metal being torn rang through the air as a smithy disintegrated beneath a stomp heavy enough to split the earth beneath it. The tremors reached the heart of the city in seconds. Dust rained from the arches. Loose stones cracked along the capital building's foundation.

Koda spun toward the sound, blades forming at his sides instinctively. Junen rose with her shield shaking in her grip. The others drew back, pressing near the walls, trying to orient themselves—

And then the wall behind them vanished.

No cracking.

No crumbling.

Just obliteration.

A thunderous blast of force ripped through the stone like it was sandpaper, reducing entire archways to powder, and the capital's eastern flank vanished in a single, blinding impact.

Through the settling debris—

It stepped into view.

The cyclops.

Fifteen feet tall. Red-skinned and veined with dark black ridges that pulsed with a molten glow—like magma swam beneath his flesh. His muscles were grotesque in size, not just large but exaggerated, swollen beyond even monstrous proportion. Every movement he made sent waves of strain through his body, cords of flesh twisting like taught ropes.

His eye—one singular, massive eye in the center of a thick, bone-crusted brow—blazed gold, wide and furious. No intelligence. No calculation. Just rage—a furnace of loathing with no direction but outward.

His face was a mask of permanent snarl, tusk-like teeth protruding from the lower jaw, blood crusted into his gums. His breath came out like steam, a continuous hiss that smelled of rot and iron and old battlefields.

He wore no true armor.

Only pelts.

Torn from creatures that had not yet stopped bleeding when he donned them—some furred, some scaled, all stained and half-torn. A wolf's maw hung from his belt. A human face, skin peeled and stretched, adorned his shoulder like a sick trophy.

Chains looped around both arms, coiled like iron serpents. They dragged behind him, ringing softly as he moved—links as thick as a man's wrist, rusted, blood-slicked, and still barbed. Some still held pieces of what they'd bound—shredded armor, fingers, once-living flesh turned into grisly ornaments.

His hands—if they could be called that—were slabs of muscle ending in blackened claws, soaked to the wrists in old blood.

And he was angry.

So angry the air cracked.

Not with power.

With fury.

He bellowed again, a sound that tore through the city like a blade through flesh, loud enough to shatter glass and send fresh tremors through the cobblestones.

And for a moment—

Even the Dreamspawn blinked again.

Wrath had arrived.

The tremors hadn't stopped. Dust still danced in the air, lit by the half-hearted sunlight that filtered through the broken archways of Delrest's once-grand hall. The Dreamspawn sat in stillness, as if even the violent collapse of the world around it wasn't worth the effort of reacting.

But then Wrath stepped through the ruin.

One massive hand gripped the broken stone of the wall as he pulled himself forward, dragging his bulk through the torn face of the capital like a beast climbing from its den. The barbed chains trailing behind him hissed across the floor like serpents.

He didn't look at them—at Koda, at Maia, at Junen or any of the others.

They were not the fixation of his rage.

Not yet.

Wrath's bloodstained footfalls thundered with each pace forward, the stone cracking beneath his weight. His golden eye locked not on the group, but on the figure still sitting beside the scar. On the unmoving husk of Sloth.

The Dreamspawn's head turned a fraction more. Its eyes, unfocused but now aware, blinked once. No words. No action.

As if in the end, Sloth couldn't be bothered to resist.

Wrath reached down.

His hand engulfed the Dreamspawn's head.

One massive, clawed hand like a red iron vice.

He squeezed.

The sound was soft—too soft. Like crushing wet clay. A crack. A pop. And then—

Sloth died.

Just like that.

No scream. No spark of defense. No final gesture of magic.

Just a soft exhale as Wrath tore the head free from the body with a wrenching, meaty snap of sinew and spine.

Blood—thick, dark, and shimmering like oil—poured down Wrath's arm, running in thick rivulets over the bulges of his muscle.

Then—

He drank.

With a wet, guttering growl, he lifted the head to his tusked mouth and bit into it—tearing flesh, slurping marrow. Gore smeared across his face, down his chest, mixing with the layers of old blood that already soaked him.

He tilted his head back and let the blood pour into his mouth, swallowing it like sacred wine.

The scar pulsed.

The great, sluggish heart hanging in the void beyond it gave one sudden, violent beat—stronger than before. Dark veins flared.

And something shifted in Wrath.

His eye burned brighter. His frame seemed to tighten, thicken. The cords of muscle twisted beneath his skin like snakes waking up. The red glow that pulsed from his veins brightened into a living furnace.

The fragments of Sloth's power—such as they were—had not been devoured out of hunger.

They had been claimed.

As fuel.

The body dropped with a wet thud.

And now…

Wrath turned toward them.

The eye locked.

And fury—true, unfiltered rage—focused.

For the first time since entering Delrest…

Wrath saw them.

The stillness after violence was always loud.

But this—this was deafening.

The Dreamspawn's lifeless body slumped beside the scar, its headless form slowly sliding to the floor like an old cloak slipping off a hook. Blood spread out in a wide, congealing circle, already cooling, already drying.

And Wrath… stood silent.

No roar.

No charge.

No triumphant bellow of supremacy.

His chest rose in slow, heaving breaths, his massive form almost vibrating with contained energy. His chains no longer clattered. They hung limp, motionless—dripping with Sloth's blood, steaming where it struck the warm stone.

Then—

Wrath twitched.

A stagger, small, but unnatural. His spine curled slightly, his bulk swaying as though he'd been struck by something inside.

His fingers curled, claws digging into his own arms. The blood smeared across his tusked mouth gurgled with each exhale.

Koda's blades still in his hands, grip tightened without a word. His instincts screamed to move, to act, to strike first—but something in him held.

Because Wrath was… shifting.

Not growing. Not mutating. But contorting. As if two instincts were fighting for the reins.

The mindless fury of a rampaging beast—

And the slow, insidious poison of apathy.

Sloth's influence.

The two battled in silence. Not a clash of wills, but a grinding of contradiction.

Wrath's muscles twitched again, flexing against themselves. His eye widened for a moment—wild, uncontrolled—but then narrowed, focused, almost calculating.

That made it worse.

Terribly worse.

Because suddenly, he wasn't just a creature of anger.

He understood.

Maia whispered behind Koda, voice barely audible. "He's learning."

And still, Wrath said nothing.

He took one step toward them.

Then stopped.

Not from hesitation. Not from fear.

But from deliberation.

His one eye burned into them—not with the wild rage of a berserker, but with the boiling patience of a tyrant. One who had tasted something new. One who had just discovered he could wait.

The fury was still there—bubbling, seething beneath his skin—but it no longer spilled over the edges. It compressed, coiled like a serpent ready to strike only when it mattered most.

Wrath tilted his head—an eerie, jerking motion too fast to be natural—and then straightened his back with a rolling crunch of bone and sinew.

And then…

He turned.

He turned away.

Step by thunderous step, he walked back toward the ruined wall. His chains dragged behind him like mourners at a funeral, whispering a metallic dirge against the stone. Not fast. Not retreating.

Withdrawing.

The air he left behind was heavier than when he entered.

He did not run.

He did not roar.

He left, spine rigid, movements controlled.

But his eye stayed locked on them until the last second before vanishing into the haze of Delrest's deathly streets.

The war cry had stopped.

But the silence that followed it…

Was worse.

Because it was not empty.

It was the silence of something thinking.

Planning.

Evolving.

And in the shadows of the ruined capital, as Sloth's blood cooled on stone and the scar pulsed once more with an unseen rhythm…

Wrath was actively becoming something more.