Silver Moraine sky hand

Not-Amadeo loomed close again, his rounded shoulders hunched in the patient manner of a carrion-bird waiting for its mark to expire. Anselm's gaze tried to travel up to him, and it was then he noticed the disfigurement this man bore --

But his strength had left him. He had just enough energy left to inch away from the putrid collection of his last meal at his feet. The man's paw, rough and textured like those distant halls his mind tried to bury, stroked his cheek.

Anselm felt the thudding in his head grow. It was not riverwater he heard now, nor the strange garbled tongue of the man who spoke in words he would not understand; now it was the unsteady staccato of his blood, the rhythm of his own life, as it pounded against a skull that threatened to split anew.