Across the smoking expanse of the avenue, the massive avalanche of volcanic rock and crushed timber began to slide downward in shuddering waves.
A sharp, metallic resonance rang out through the dust, followed by the violent clatter of cracked crimson armor plates sloughing off onto the cobblestones.
The bulky, seven-foot silhouette that terrorized the vanguard did not step out of the rubble as an armored juggernaut.
Instead, the thick crimson breastplate and spiked pauldrons split down their center seams, falling away like the discarded shell of a molting cicada.
What emerged from beneath the mountain of shattered iron was an entirely different nightmare, built for lethal, terrifying agility.
The King stood tall and whip-thin, his slender frame encased in taut, midnight-purple flesh covered in intricate, glowing obsidian glyphs.
His face was angular and predatory, devoid of human ears or a nose, possessing four narrow eye-slits where glowing pupils burned with sharp intellect.
