Phei did not break eye contact with Kyle.
He leaned in slightly. His grin had not moved — it had only grown wider, hungrier, the kind of grin that belonged on something ancient and starving.
"You're nothing. Submit."
"AAAAAAAGH — NO — NO — PHEI — PLEEEEASE — DON'T —"
"Cosmic Dragon Face."
Kyle's scream climbed into a sonic that broke the fabric of reality itself.
The throbbing in the room accelerated into a frantic, arrhythmic convulsion, the chamber itself entering cardiac arrest. No longer a slow pulse — a violent, meaty pounding like a dying heart trying to explode out of its cage.
The Void-Ice chains anchoring Kyle's limbs began to vibrate with unholy frequency, black-violet frost cracking and reforming in jagged spikes that tore fresh grooves into his wrists and ankles.
