The pain in Kael's arms was enough to make a grown man cry. But the closing jaws in front of him were more than enough to make that same man suck it up and dodge as if his life depended on it.
And in this case, it did so and a half.
The notification still burned behind his eyes like an insult. Crippled. Both arms broken. The kind of wording that sounded clean and simple until you lived inside it.
His forearms weren't just hurting; they were useless, weight dangling from shoulders that screamed every time his body shifted.
Pain pulsed up into his skull in hot waves, every heartbeat a hammer strike. Yet the Basilisk's maw was right there, wet breath and rotten heat washing over him as teeth snapped shut with a sound like stone grinding against stone.
Fear didn't even get time to be an emotion.
It became a function.
Move or die.
