Through the native limestone of the witness rail, Noll Vey felt the shivering distress of the creature standing behind the red chalk line.
The Last Guest was struggling.
The black wool coat it had formed from the dissolved revival clause hung loosely around its narrow shoulders. Around its wrists, the fabric kept turning into ragged curls of black smoke that drifted toward the ceiling before snapping back into place with tiny, static clicks. Its pale hands, which had caught the ribbon of black light with such fluid precision minutes before, were clutched tightly over its stomach as if guarding an internal ache that no swallowed paper could soothe.
It looked small.
When Noll had spoken his dawn proclamation from the ridge wall, he had imagined an insatiable engine of destruction—a cosmic landlord who would sweep the valley clean of Vane’s army in a single swallow. But an entity called forth by human lies is shaped by the nature of the debts that feed it. Every false penny, every empty strongbox, every magical flame that Noll had summoned to survive the winter had left its mark on the creature’s core.
The creature was starving because it had been built out of hunger.
