The crimson light above Velmora drew inward.
Simon's words were a provocation, but what he had done to the lightning was something worse.
After a strike, the remaining power should have dispersed into the realm. In time, it would have returned to the same vast circulation from which the tribulation drew.
However, the portions he had consumed would never return that way.
They were inside his bones. His muscles. The body the lightning had been sent to destroy.
He was stealing from it.
The presence within the clouds followed the missing power and recognised the hunger responsible.
The Devourers.
A forbidden power. One that should never have returned to the world.
Lightning gathered fiercely above Simon. Then it stopped.
Through the traces its strikes had left within him, the tribulation searched his blood. The Uruqath and the Nine-Tailed Byakko joined in a form neither should have possessed.
But these were not the bloodline it sought.
It searched again.
