Within the pool of blood, a gate materialized. What lay beyond it was harder to place, dark and hollow, the kind of emptiness that didn't feel like absence so much as a place where something else entirely began. The void, maybe. Or something worse.
Something peered through the gate first, just a glimpse, a creature scanning its surroundings with the unhurried curiosity of a child playing hide and seek. Its appearance was malicious in every visible detail.
And yet there was something underneath that, something that moved like innocence and looked like wonder. The mismatch was the most disturbing part.
The creature was pale, the kind of white that belonged to marble, cold and deliberate. Its figure was sharp, muscles defined like something sculpted rather than born.
Golden vein-like patterns traced across its body, and above its head floated a halo that wasn't quite a halo, more sigil than sacred, more mark than crown. The pitch-black eyes gave nothing away.
