The silence that followed the word "Sister" was like a vacuum that sucked the oxygen right out of the medical tent. Cherion stood there, his fingers still clamped around Marielle's forearm like a particularly clingy barnacle. He could feel the lean, whip-cord muscle beneath her furs, a warrior's arm, built for the singular purpose of putting a spear through something's heart.
Sister.
The word echoed in the hollow chambers of his skull, bouncing off the walls of his frantic internal monologue. In the original novel, Zarius Valtrane was a man of absolute, crushing solitude. He was the end of his line, a solitary wolf in a land of ice. There was no mention of a sibling. No "Marielle" tucked away in the footnotes.
I've broken the world, Cherion thought, his stomach performing a slow, sickening roll. Either the author skipped a whole character in editing, or I just accidentally unlocked a secret DLC character.
