He left lightning-clad and to a sound like thunder, like the earth cracking. In his wake, workers fled scaffolding and soldiers scrambled in fear of an attack which never came.

Shadows parted for him, revealing the spaces between.

And he was welcomed there, beyond substance and form, felt more at home in what writhed and tested the boundaries of reality than when given hard flesh—

Was spat out again under a sky that was no sky, but a collection of light-filled eyes burned redly beneath the bedrock of the world. His children were not alone here; set on a great sacrificial altar made of the compressed and mortared remains of other children. They squirmed and cried and screamed with dozens of others, who had been taken in a short stretch of time— all left to die. Some of them were close to dying, not even enough energy to shiver in their swaddling, round faces sallow.

Around the high altar crashed a black sea of deathless spirits, clawing and biting and battling each other, both more and less than shadows. Victors would slither, long-limbed and sharp-taloned, atop the bones, pour themselves into the weakest bodies, those just on the cusp of death.... and be gone.

Armor-clad, the Brucolac crashed into place among them like a meteor, scattering shades and spirits in cold fire that flared and died. They ignored him in their frenzy, clambered over him like animals, shrieking banshee wails, wanting to be real. It was flesh they needed, not to consume, but to crawl inside like parasites.

By right and ritual, and by all laws, he'd sworn, to give up his own. The fell power in his hands now, to break those laws, to undo some horror, some magic so ancient that the span of his life was no more than a mote of dust against it. He could break them.

But only twice. And there was a horde to cross.