The innkeeper’s jaw detached with the sound of a dry branch snapping underfoot.
The pale skin of his chin split vertically down the midline, tearing open all the way to the notch of his collarbone.
There was no tongue inside the cavity.
There were no lungs, no throat cords, no red blood.
Filling his hollow chest cavity was a churning, writhing ball of thousands of pale, semi-clear tapeworms.
Each parasite was as thick as an iron carpenter’s nail, segmented and barbed with triple rings of hardened, recurved teeth.
The swarm hissed all at once—a high-pitched, shaking hum that made the teeth in Lu Chen’s jaw ache with phantom shaking.
SHHKKKK!
