[Ovelia's POV]
A sudden gale-force wind ripped through the clearing.
It wasn't natural wind. It had intent—a focused, furious precision that slammed into the Electro-Blast like a battering ram of compressed air. The crackling energy veered wildly off course, its deadly trajectory shattered, and detonated harmlessly above the treetops in a brilliant blue flash that lit the night sky like a dying star.
My ears rang. I was still alive. Somehow, impossibly, I was still alive.
Then I saw it. Movement near my face—something small, erratic, a flicker of light and motion I first mistook for a butterfly caught in a storm. But as it drew closer, the creature's form resolved into something out of the stories I'd devoured as a child, the ones I'd believed were nothing but pretty lies.
