Page 71 of Scarlet Wars
The stench of death.
The pain crashed over me so hard I could barely breathe.
The translation roared through my veins, faster, darker, hotter. My Skindo pulsed with it, as if it too had felt the shift.
I moved forward instead, Rachel’s commands drowned out by the pounding in my chest and the roar inside my skull.
I didn’t care if this was strategy. I didn’t care if it was reckless.
All I wanted was tokill.
My heart thundered in my ears. The cold was gone. The grief was gone.
Only the fight remained.
The blades of my Skindo extended, pulsing with dark energy as I neared the border by myself, and launched into the fray.
My red haze exploded outward, curling in jagged tendrils through the freezing air, and visible inside the Collective.
That’s going to raise questions.
Screw it, I’d worry about it later.
There was something way more important right now.
Something that felt a lot like healing.
My choking haze was already in motion as I crossed into the Human World, ignoring Rachel’s orders to stay within the Metasphere.
She didn’t know my translation was man-made.
She didn’t know it didn’t weaken behind borders.
She didn’t know what I was.
Not until I showed her.
Not until Islaughteredthem.
One by one.
Every single one who dared to cross me.
Who dared to come near me.
They were all responsible.
They’d killed my parents.
They’d murdered them in cold blood.
They were?—
Movement flickered at the edge of my vision.
I forced myself to look up through the choking haze, expecting another attacker. Instead, a familiar darkness rippled between the trees on the far side of the clearing.
Obsidian.
