Knee-deep snow blanketed the floor of the ravine, stretching between the sheer stone cliffs like a fine vooli pelt. Ares pushed back his hood and stared up at the violet sky as it deepened into black.

“Going to be a cold night,” he muttered. The Dagger was visible again, its familiar black outline pointing toward the wide waterplains of the Ardu-Sai. Behind it lay a tapestry of stars, their brilliant glow muted by the dark veil of the Shadowring.

Go back, it seemed to say. Leave this place.

That wasn’t an option. He glanced over his shoulder. Twenty-five Vradhu followed him, their dark faces grim. The ivory points of their war-spears carved through the deepening shadows, bobbing up-and-down as if floating on an uneasy pond.

Like Ares, they moved quickly and silently, propelling themselves over the snow with the help of their kratok bone skis.

As was customary, their leader, Maki-ku-Rathra, brought up the rear, guarding his pack with sharp-eyed vigilance. They were deep in kratok territory now, and although the beasts were supposed to be in the midst of their winter hibernation, one never knew when a lone male might catch their scent and emerge from its burrow.

This was the Highfold, a place of sheer cliffs, deep ravines, and bitterly cold winters. Before the Shadowring had appeared in the sky, the warm season would see a complete melting of the snows, and the blanket of ice under their feet would turn into a river of startling blue, its crystalline waters revealing a submerged forest of ancient logs.

At least that’s what Ares had heard. He’d never seen a true Melting in his lifetime. The warm season still came, but its power was muted by the shadows in the sky.

Ares crested a ridge and nimbly swerved around a grey boulder, using the small downward slope to build momentum. Cold air rushed past him, caressing his face and the bare sides of his scalp, tugging at his long warrior’s braid. A faint roar reached his ears, growing louder as he neared the Source.

They had almost arrived at the base of the Matya, the highest peak in the imposing Esskar range.

This was Ares’s territory. He was khefe—a lone Hunter—and he had earned the right to venture here alone, but even he was hesitant to trek deep into the Highfold during winter. The Vradhu were a warmth-loving species, and like all of his kin, Ares hated the cold.

He had bitter memories of the cold.

Angling his skis, he carved a vicious half-circle in the snow, throwing up a spray of white powder as he came to a halt. He held up a hand and the Hunters behind him stopped in a similar fashion, quickly removing their skis and strapping them to their backs. Ares removed an ankre pod from his pack and snapped it open.

Darkness had fallen, and all he could make out were the whites of his clan-brothers’ eyes.

Soft pink light formed a halo around the pack as the bioluminescent pod flared to life. Ares nodded in the direction of the cliff face, where ancient steps were carved into the stone wall, marking out a precipitous path to the top. He exchanged a knowing look with Maki and began to climb.

“I still don’t see the point in going all the way to top,” someone down the line grumbled. “It’d make better sense to check downstream first—”

Maki silenced the dissenter with a hiss. “There are dead things all the way from the river mouth to the Clanlands. We don’t know how far up the chain the poison goes, so we will start at the Source and trace our way down through the Seeli Caves. We can’t afford to miss anything.”

Ares turned and glared at the insolent warrior, a lowlander named Baku. Don’t you understand anything? He had half a mind to beat some respect into the idiot, but Maki had his own subtle way of dealing with these things. Several Hunters returned his stare with hostile looks of their own.

Pureblooded fools. Around half the pack was new, replacing those who had died during the last kratok hunt. Out of all of them, only Ares and Maki had a decent number of hunts under their belts.

Maki had five. He was once-blooded.

Ares had seven, the magic number. He was thrice-blooded, having killed three queens—a record for this generation of Hunters. The last queen he’d killed had been ancient, her eyeteeth as long as his arms. He’d taken the teeth as his prize and had them fashioned into krivera by a revered old weaponsmith.

Nothing was quite as sharp and strong and beautiful as a pair of kratok-fang blades.

The very same krivera were now strapped to his back as he climbed the walls of the Highfold, moving by feel more than sight.

Ares didn’t even need the ankre’s light, for he knew this ascent like the back of his hand, but he let it shine for the benefit of his brothers. They didn’t have time to rescue any Hunter who slipped off the icy path.

The faint roar grew louder. “It’s beyond the boulders,” Ares shouted, mindful of those who had never been here before. “Follow me. Careful. The rocks are slippery here.” A luminous blue mist rose from behind the massive rocks, which were nothing more than dark silhouettes.

He hauled himself up the rocks, muscles straining, his bare hands protesting as they came into contact with the freezing stone. Ares climbed quickly, by feel more than sight. Moving through the ancient stone formations and crevasses of the Highfold was as natural to him as breathing.

After all, this was his hunting ground.

As he reached the top, a gust of warm air hit him in the face. Moving quickly, he turned and traversed a narrow path that led down to a flat embankment of smooth rock.

Ares looked up at the waterfall as he waited for the others to catch up. As always, the Source was a breathtaking sight, a torrent of heated spring water rising from some unknown place within the mountain and cascading down an impossibly sheer cliff. Steam rolled off it, lit up by the brilliant glow of luminescent blue algae. The waterfall disappeared into a giant hole in the rock, where it became the underground riverway they called the Seeli Caves.

When the snows melted, he wouldn’t even be able to stand here. This place would turn into a raging torrent of water.

As Maki and the others reached his side, Ares raised his arm and pointed at the waterfall. Strange green lights flickered behind the curtain of water, followed by a ripple of shadow. “See there?” he shouted, making sure they could read his lips in the glow of the ankre-light. “There’s someone or something behind the waterfall.”

A deep cave extended behind the cascade. Ares had spent many a night there, taking advantage of the natural warmth that seeped through the rocks.

“Who dares?” Maki hissed, his dark eyes narrowing in anger. The deep black ankhata on his face accentuated his fearsome expression.

“If they are the ones responsible for poisoning our waters, I will tear their eyeballs from their faces and rip out their tongues, so they have no choice but to walk blindly and mutely into the Underdark.” A vicious smile curved Ares’s lips as he contemplated his revenge.

“Hold, brother.” Maki put a hand on Ares’s shoulder. “Put a leash on that famous temper of yours. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll destroy them.”

“Now I remember why you don’t work well with others, Ares-rai.”

“I’m just thinking like a Hunter.”

“The absence of caution can get you killed.”

“So can overthinking. I haven’t survived seven hunts by being scholarly.”

“Truth. But you are also unfairly gifted.”

“Merely shaped by Aethra’s will, my Lord.”

Several of the new warriors hissed as they witnessed Ares’s familiarity with the pack-leader, but Ares was beyond caring about formality and protocol. Maki might be a Lord of the Two Clans, but he was also his friend.

Ares dipped his head in a show of respect. “I will go first and find out what is—”

A sleek vessel flew out from behind the waterfall, slicing through the torrent of water.

In unison, the warriors whipped their war-spears from behind their backs. “Magrel!” one of the purebloods hissed.

Ares drew his krivera—his twin bone swords.

The vessel looked like something straight out of the glyphs depicted in the Ancient Stones; a double-winged ship the size of a youngling kratok.

It drifted toward the embankment and descended in front of them, seemingly soundless against the backdrop of the roaring falls. Ares held his blades low as the cursed machine landed on a flat area of stone. A blast of warm air hit him in the face, fluttering the edges of his cloak.

Curled around his left leg, his tail twitched in anticipation.

“Naaga,” Maki growled, loud enough for only Ares to hear. “Now it makes sense. They poisoned the Source to draw us out of hiding.”

“What could they possibly want with us? There is nothing of value to them here.” A low hiss left Ares’s lips. “How did they learn of our existence? We withdrew from the outside world eons ago. Perhaps it is best to just kill them and be done with it.”

“Caution, brother. They obviously lured us here with some plan in mind. The Made Ones will be anticipating our violence.”

“Feh.” Ares took a step forward, raising his blades. “Just let them try and take advantage of us.” Anger unfurled in his chest, making him want to decapitate the first Naaga he saw.

Young race of fools. They deserve to die slowly and painfully for what they have done to us.

They had tracked the poisoned waterways all the way from the Clanlands to the Highfold. He’d seen the destruction first-hand; the dead trees and plants, the lifeless sarukark floating belly-up in the rivers, the desolation across the wide waterplains. Their people had been forced out of the Clanlands and into the dense sekkhoi forests, where they carved out a meager living off sekkhoi fruit and rainwater.

This was not how they were supposed to live.

The Vradhu Hunters had been sent to find the source of the corruption and deal with it.

They hadn’t been expecting this.

A door opened in the side of the ship. A ramp slid to the ground. Out walked a group of Naaga, six in total. They wore long robes that concealed their bodies from head to feet. Only the lower halves of their blue faces were visible.

“White-eyed devils,” someone hissed. They had never seen the Naaga in real life, but they all knew what they looked like. They’d all been made to study the Ancient Stones, which depicted the long and bloody history of their peoples.

Ares was already moving, ignoring Maki’s warning and sprinting across the flat rocks until he was face-to-face with the Naaga. He raised his swords. “Leave and take your cursed poison with you. This is our territory, Naaga.”

He would defend it to the death.

The Naaga responded with silence. They didn’t even flinch.

The group slowly parted. Another Naaga emerged, clad in shimmering armor made from thousands of tiny metal scales. A faceless helm concealed her features, but Ares could tell it was a she from the way she moved and the shape of her body.

The others respectfully moved aside.

A rush of feet and the collective flare of two dozen killing auras told Ares that Maki had assembled the pack behind him. His tail became a black blur as it uncoiled from around his leg and wrapped around the female’s neck. He pressed the venomous barb against the underside of her chin.

He spotted a weak point there; a gap where the edge of the helm was supposed to connect with her scale-armor. Ares could punch his barb through it in an instant. She would be dead as soon as the tip punctured her skin.

Vradhu venom was incredibly toxic to all species on Khira. It was why they kept their tails so tightly leashed.

To further emphasize his point, Ares leveled the tips of his swords at her chest. According to the Ancient Stones, the Naaga possessed two hearts.

One on the right, and one on the left.

“Tek a tek,” she said.

What the fuck did that mean?

“Why did you poison the Source?” Maki roared.

No response. The Naaga pulled something from the belt at her waist; a round metal orb attached to a chain.

Realization struck him. “They can’t understand us. Old Verthe once told me they are unable to speak any tongue but their own. The Drakhin designed them that way.”

“Then what’s the point of—”

A pungent, sickly-sweet smell filled the air, mingling with the earthy-wet scent of the Source. Faint white smoke poured from the orb. The female swung it back-and-forth, inclining her head.

Weakness flooded through Ares. His legs started to quiver. His grip became loose. “Poison!” he gasped.

He slammed his tail-barb home. It pierced the soft skin underneath the Naaga’s chin. The effect was instantaneous. She fell to the ground, dead. The orb dropped from her hands and rolled around on the glistening rock.

At the same time, Ares and his clan-brothers dropped to their knees. It was as if all his muscles had been turned into stone. He couldn’t move, not even to turn his head to look at Maki and the others.

Were they going to die here?

Why the fuck would they lure us up here, only to kill us?

That final thought trickled through his mind as the remaining Naaga swarmed around them, metal restraints appearing in their hands.

His anger turned to horror and outrage, and then…

Nothing.

* * *

Consciousness returned. Ares gasped. His eyes flew open. Excruciating pain drilled through his head, from the base of his skull right up into his temples.

An oppressive grey ceiling arched overhead. He couldn’t move. Something held him down. Where is the sky? A bolt of panic shot through him. They’d taken him somewhere. He was trapped. Where was Maki? Where were the rest of the Vradhu pack? He tried to sit up, but restraints cut into his flesh. Ares screamed in frustration.

Cold hands touched his bare skin. Suddenly, a Naaga hovered over him. Pearlescent white eyes without pupil or iris dissected him.

“I’ll fucking kill you,” Ares spat. He tried to move his tail, but it was bound tightly around his leg. Although he desperately wanted to strike the Naaga, the venom in his barb was depleted and would take several days to replenish.

The Naaga shrugged. “You are truly as dangerous as they warned, aren’t you? Oh, do not look at me like that, barbarian. Understand that your people survive at our mercy. The moment you stop being useful to us is the moment we obliterate the Ardu-Sai. If you do as we say, you and your clansmen will be treated fairly, and we will reverse the contamination.”

“Fairly? Y-you poisonous… bastard…” Ares’s speech came out jumbled. He shook his head, trying to make sense of it all through the thick fog in his mind. Of course, the Naaga spoke only Naaga, and for some reason, Ares understood him perfectly well.

How?

“Since we are unable to speak any other tongue, all of our subjects get the language implant.” The Naaga sighed. “Yours is not grafting well. Too much aggression, you have. Try to calm down. Here. This will help.”

Ares raged against his restraints, but it was futile. Something cold and hard came into contact with the bare skin of his lower arm. A needle prick.

Then darkness.

* * *

Ares rubbed the area at the base of his skull. A small, faintly tender ridge protruded from his skin; the only remaining evidence that magrel had been forced into his brain.

Now he could communicate in perfect Naaga. All of the Vradhu warriors could, thanks to their blue captors.

Despicable creatures. If only the cursed Drakhin were still around to take responsibility for their unruly race of slaves.

Ares caught Maki’s eye. The Lord of the Two Clans returned his stare with a forlorn look. “They have us caught between the kratok’s jaws.” He rolled his war-spear back-and-forth along bare, callused palms.

At least they’d been given their weapons back, along with their kratok-hide armor. “So you can hunt effectively,” they said.

“There is nothing on my mind but blood-rage.” Ares tried to still his twitching tail. “We should kill them now. What can they really do to us apart from poison our lands? Our people are safe in the sekkhoi, and I don’t trust these white-eyed devils and their false bargains.” Fury turned his heartbeat into a rapid staccato. The dull remnant of pain in his head only added to his anger.

“Ares,” Maki said slowly, rising from his seat. “If the Ardu-Sai is destroyed, where will we go? The Naaga have spread uncontrollably across Khira. They vastly outnumber us. We can’t afford to do anything rash.”

Ares walked across to the only window in their cell, a narrow slit revealing the dark, glittering vacuum of space. He stared outside. “Especially now that they have thrust us amongst the stars?” Unease unfurled in the pit of his stomach. He’d never thought he would enter space, and now they were on a Naaga ship, bound for the Dagger in the sky.

Of course, the Dagger was actually a vessel, an ancient destroyer left behind by the Drakhin when they abandoned the lush paradise that was Khira. The Drakhin word for it was Hythra. No one really knew why it was still stuck in Khira’s orbit, and even the scholars who constantly pored over the Ancient Stones—Ares’s father included—had been unable to learn its true origins.

The Dagger was an enigma, and it was currently occupied by the Naaga, the blue-skinned creatures that had once been slaves to the Drakhin.

Everything their masters had left behind, the Naaga had taken over.

“Control that famous temper of yours, brother,” Maki whispered as they momentarily became weightless. The gravity in the cell had been fluctuating ever since they left the surface of Khira. Ares cursed as his feet left the ground. “We have our weapons and our armor and our venom. Let us enter this destroyer and act at completing this task they have set for us. All the while, we will wait and observe and learn. We are Vradhu, and their combat skills pale in comparison to ours. Surely the opportunity to escape will present itself.”

Gravity returned, and Ares, Maki, and two-dozen Vradhu warriors dropped to the floor again, their bare feet making barely a sound. The others, especially the younger purebloods, appeared spooked.

None of them had been in space before.

“The transporter will be docking soon. As soon as your holding cell opens, you are to exit the vessel through the rear entrance.”

“What?” Vanu, the youngest of the pack, thrust his spear in the direction of the cold, detached voice. It came from the ceiling. “Show yourself, bastard!”

“They are speaking through a machine,” Maki said quietly. “Save your energy, Vanu.”

The warrior’s face darkened like a towering storm, but he dipped his head in acknowledgement and backed down, even though outrage twisted the black ankhata on his cheeks.

“You will be released into the most heavily infested sector of the Hythra. Do not bother looking for us, because you will not find us. Your task is to hunt the Corrupted. Full decapitation is necessary in all cases. Fail in this task, and the consequences will be dire.”

“They plan to use us like animals,” Vanu hissed. “To hunt their own vermin?”

It made sense. The Vradhu were the most supreme natural hunters on Khira. Of course the Naaga would want to use them to eliminate pests. Ares shook his head as he stared out of the small window. The bleak edges of the Hythra were coming into view. A strange kind of anticipation coursed through him as he caught sight of the ancient ship.

Some said the Dagger had been the floating residence of the Dark One himself.

As they drifted inside the Hythra, entering through an open portal in her metal hull, the feeling grew stronger.

Dark energy. That’s what it was. A ripple of static along his skin. Whispers in his mind. His heart clenching and twisting.

Welcome, Hunter.

Had the language implant turned him mad, or had a voice just spoken in his mind?

What?

He tried to elicit a response, but all he got in return was an emptiness as vast and desolate as the Hythra herself.

So be it. It was pointless to dwell on what he couldn’t change. Things only made sense to Ares when he moved forward. Do not dwell. Act. He felt for his swords, making sure they were secure at his back. He checked his bone-daggers, making sure the large serrated one at his waist easily slid free of its scabbard. He flicked his tail, willing his poison-barb to regenerate.

Then he closed his eyes and waited, vowing never to let anyone, Naaga or otherwise, get the better of him ever again.

He would not be owned.

His will was his own.

Oh, you will do just fine, Hunter.

There it was again. The voice in his mind—was it male or female?—spoke something else, some language in-between Vradhu and Naaga, and somehow, he understood.

Truly, this translator-thing in his brain had damaged his sanity. Perhaps killing some of those wretched Naaga would make him feel right again.

* * *

As they disembarked from the transporter, Ares’s heart pounded like a skin drum. As khefe, he went first, his krivera drawn and ready.

Ever since they’d woken inside that cramped cell on the transport, they hadn’t seen a single Naaga. The white-eyed devils worked remotely, using threats and physical restraints. He suspected it was because they lacked the ability to fight.

By their actions, they showed that they feared the Vradhu, as they should.

Ares walked down the ramp, taking in his surroundings. They were in a massive square chamber bordered on all sides by grey walls. The walls possessed a strange reflective quality, capturing the light and throwing it back at them in the form of glittering skeins of silver. As he stared at the metallic surface, it seemed to writhe and shift, as if responding to his scrutiny.

The sensation in his chest intensified into a solid thrum. Energy rippled across his skin. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement.

There. In the corner. He whirled. The Vradhu pack moved in unison, following Ares down the ramp. They spread out in a defensive formation, with Ares at the front.

He was the spearhead, after all. His father had named him well.

“These are the so-called Corrupted?” Maki growled. “This is our prey?”

Three Naaga stared blankly at them.

“They want us to kill their own kind?” A deep and thorough sense of disgust filled Ares’s heart. He couldn’t understand these Naaga at all. They fought without weapons and traded in secrets and lies. They bargained without honor and their promises were laced with hidden barbs.

And now they would use Ares and his clan-brothers like trained shuklak-beasts, to exterminate their brethren?

“We have to find a way out of here,” he whispered. “This is madness.”

“Look, Ares. There’s something wrong with them.”

As Ares stepped onto the floor of the cavernous chamber, heat radiated through his bare feet.

What is this? Was the floor actually warm, or was the air around them frigid?

Pulsating vibrations rippled across the soles of his feet. The surface of the floor felt soft and pliable, and it seemed to actually caress his bare skin as if it were a living thing.

His heart thudded in his chest like a war-drum.

The three Naaga lurched forward, walking with an uneven gait. Maki was right. There was a wrongness about them.

Their pale blue skin had lost its lustre. The plumage covering their heads was gone, replaced by a crown of shimmering grey metal that twisted and swayed as they walked. The very same metal substance marred their skin, forming small jagged patches—as if they had caught a flesh-eating disease.

“Unngh.” One of the Naaga moaned, a flat, desolate sound that made Ares’s tail stiffen.

Corrupted. Now Ares understood. These creatures were no longer alive. They were little more than soulless husks, consumed from the inside out by some malevolent metal demon.

How? What is this sorcery?

A dull hum echoed through the chamber, and the ramp extending from the Naaga vessel started to withdraw. Ares snapped his head toward the sound, staring at the magrel vessel.

The Naaga ship was simply a much larger version of the craft they’d encountered at the Source. Curved wings extended from a sleek metal hull shaped like an arrowhead. Thin slits representing port-holes appeared along its midsection, disappearing where the hull widened at the rear to accommodate four long tubelike projections. They were as big as ancient tree trunks and emitted an unnatural green glow. Apart from the rear exit, there were no other visible doors. They had never seen the Naaga who piloted the cursed thing.

For such a large vessel, it was unnervingly quiet, hovering about a man’s height above the floor.

Thin metal arms extended from the belly of the ship, depositing a black box onto the floor. “Supplies. Enough to sustain you for the duration of your Hunt.”

There was that creepy fucking disembodied voice again, amplified from some hidden source within the ship.

The ship emitted several blasts of hot air and reversed.

“Yo, they’re leaving us here?” Vanu broke from the pack and ran toward the ship as it retreated. The rear wall opened, revealing another cavernous chamber.

“It would be foolish to try and follow us, Vradhu hunter. Those who set foot on the Hythra are never allowed to leave. If you take another step forward, we will activate the airlock and all of you will die.”

The way the insolent Naaga threatened death, one would think the Vradhu were little more than animals.

“Vanu!” Maki reached the young warrior’s side and dragged him back.

Vanu froze.

The rear wall slammed shut with deafening finality, cutting them off from the retreating vessel—their only escape.

These Naaga think they can toy with us? The thrumming in Ares’s veins became a steady pulse, deep and resonant and powerful. Its heady, intoxicating nature reminded him of the Vradhu war-dance.

The Corrupted moaned.

Ares hissed and drew his swords. He ran forward, the pack moving behind him in strict formation. They might resent him, but they knew how strong he was. They knew what he was.

Spearhead.

Several more Corrupted joined the horde. Two broke away from the group, sprinting forward with unnatural speed.

Ares ran faster. His blade found the neck of one, slicing through flesh and metal. Doof. The blank-eyed head dropped to the floor and rolled onto its side.

The other Corrupted evaded him, going straight for one of the young purebloods.

“Aargh!” The Vradhu’s scream split the silence as the Corrupted raked metal-taloned fingers across his chest. Panicking, he uncoiled his tail and sank his barb into the creature’s back.

Still, it kept moving. The potent paralysis toxin in the Vradhu sting failed to take it down.

That was unheard of. A Hunter’s poison always felled its prey.

Maki arrived in a flash, swinging his war-spear in a brutal arc that severed the Corrupted’s neck and sent its head toppling to the ground.

Ares ignored the twitching headless body on the floor and swept through the horde of Corrupted like a tempest as more and more of the wretched things piled into the room. Maki and the pack followed his lead, countering the speed of the Corrupted with the deadly grace of the Vradhu war-dance.

Shik. One of Ares’s blades snagged a limb.

Crunch. The other went through a neck.

Whoosh. He evaded another frenzied attack, his long braid swinging wildly.

All the while, his bare feet flirted with the metal floor. Each step was met with a surge of warmth, as if he were drawing energy out of the Hythra itself.

Finding a lull in the battle, he paused to take stock of his situation. His breathing was rapid, his pulse frantic, his senses stretched taut. The world moved in hyper-real slow-motion; he felt as if he could streak through it at the speed of light. Even the tiniest vibration could be felt through his blades, which had become an extension of his body.

This was bloodlust. This was when his heart sang. This was when he felt most alive.

This was his duty.

He was made for the hunt. Hunters didn’t get to enjoy the simple pleasures of clan life. Once the ankhata emerged, marking the onset of manhood, the warriors were sent to the outer reaches of the Ardu-Sai to guard against kratok and protect the hidden Clanlands from discovery. Never again would they enjoy the warmth of a female’s nest, and as for the prospect of finding a mate…

What sane female would want to bond with a Hunter?

Hunters didn’t get mates. Death was their betrothed, and battle was one of the few pleasures they could enjoy.

Boom. A tremor shook the floor. The surface went from pleasantly warm to burning hot. Ares started to move, but the floor had become soft under his feet, like mud.

His feet sank in.

What? Impossible!

The burning sensation in his feet turned into pain, as if thousands of tiny needles were being pushed into his soles.

The floor rippled outwards.

The floor rose up.

The floor around him turned into shimmering liquid metal.

Welcome, Hunter.

Ares tried to leap away, but the shifting stuff had a good hold on him now, sending vines of liquid metal up his legs. Writhing tendrils pierced his skin, drawing out rivulets of blood.

The other Vradhu ran to his side, shouting in alarm.

Magrel. Unnatural. Disgust and horror coursed through him.

The very substance of the Hythra herself invaded him, eating him alive. Was he doomed to meet the same fate as the Corrupted?

As Ares sank into the floor, he begged the fates for a miracle.

The living metal rippled under his skin, shooting through his chest, his arms, his face, even his fucking eyes.

He screamed.