The chest opened under his blade with practiced efficiency. Ribs cracked, organs shifted, and there, nestled against a heart the size of a barrel, glowing with magic that pulsed even in death, lay the Star-Shard.
It was smaller than he'd expected, perhaps the size of a gold coin, but the light it generated was impossibly bright, blue so intense it hurt to look at directly. Elder Elks rarely formed shards this pure, this concentrated.
The magic required to create such crystallization was immense, the kind that came from centuries of absorbing winter's power, of surviving in environments that killed lesser creatures, of becoming something more than animal and less than god.
Rare didn't begin to describe it. This was the kind of trophy that legends were built on, that would be remembered in songs and stories, that validated every insane decision that had led him to this moment.
