The shaft of sunlight cut through the gloom like a falling monolith. Splinters of ancient redwood the size of javelins rained down, whistling through the air as the canopy tore open.
The sky descended.
The System labeled it a [Solar Avian-Elemental] (Level 75+), but the numbers were a joke. Its wingspan stretched the width of a collapsed freeway overpass, forged from roaring solar fire and metallic ash. It didn't have feathers; it had blades of crystallized heat that hummed with the sound of grinding stone.
"Great," Don muttered, shielding his eyes with a gloved hand. "A giant, flying space-heater. Because the humidity in this tree wasn't doing enough to ruin my afternoon."
"Space-heater?" Elias hissed, his neon-blue [Oversight Eye] spinning with a frantic, electronic whine. A thin trail of smoke curled from the edge of his socket. "Don, my hardware is currently trying to uninstall its own drivers. This thing isn't a bird. It's a localized extinction event with a beak."
