The hand that clawed out of the mirror didn’t look like the hand of a nineteen-year-old keeper.
It was broad, thick-knuckled. Then it caked in greasy black soot that smelled of burned horsehair and burned up thick parchment. The fingernails were cracked and split, ground down to ragged stubs against stone. Across the swollen veins of the forearm ran deep, corded burns. Scars left by fire that had burned up entire libraries.
In its grip was a notched, heavy butcher’s cleaver forged from raw pig iron. The cutting edge was four feet long, stained with blackened oil, its spine etched with jagged seizure runes that hissed whenever the grey air touched them.
“Get behind the iron!” Lord Ren roared, shoving Mira back toward the wagon wheel as the timber frame shuddered under the sheer physical shifted weight of the summon.
The creature didn’t climb out gracefully. He tore through the silver plane of the Speculum as if ripping through wet parchment, his heavy, muscle-corded shoulders bursting into physical space with a wet, cracking roar. He fell onto his hands and knees in the ash, a massive, feral dark shape draped in boiled leather that had been scorched down to the greasy hide.
