Orin didn't make it in time.
The entity that emerged from Hell's gate moved different.
A manifestation.
Reality bent around it like cloth pulled taut, distorting, warping, struggling to contain something that existed outside the normal rules of space and time.
The creature was massive - fifteen feet of writhing shadow and impossible geometry, limbs that branched into smaller limbs that branched again, each one ending in claws that looked like they could carve through the concept of matter itself.
Its eyes, dozens of them, scattered across its form without pattern or reason, fixed on Orin with the cold assessment of a predator recognizing prey.
The Grand Commander stared at it. At the wrongness made flesh.
Then he did what he'd been trained to do.
He attacked.
Golden light erupted from Orin's body, divine radiance so bright it hurt to look at.
