The seam between two lives didn’t bleed red. It bled violet fire and cold sulfur steam.
When Berserker Ren’s teeth sank into the lead centurion’s throat, his back teeth didn’t crush windpipe or gristle. They clamped directly onto the shimmering, rainbow-bright fault line where the royal gold-silver metal and the rebel burlap met in physical space.
The sound was like an iron prybar being jammed into a spinning bronze flywheel.
SKRRRR-CRACK.
A pulse of blinding violet light exploded from the centurion’s collarbone. The officer shrieked—a high, layered wail of an aristocrat dying on silk sheets and a conscript choking in a muddy trench fifty years later, both voices terminating at the exact same instant.
Berserker Ren didn’t let go.
His massive, soot-blackened throat convulsed. He sucked the glowing chronological tension straight out of the officer’s neck, swallowing the raw friction of two conflicting histories like hot animal fat.
The feedback was total for the soldier.
