With a roar that echoed through the storm, Azure urged his horse forward, charging down the cliffside. The rain lashed against his armor, but that sensation was nothing compared to the adrenaline coursing through him as he plunged into the chaos below.

The enemies loomed ahead, a slumbering beast waiting for the storm to wake it. Eyes flickered in the darkness like dying stars, their feeble light barely piercing the sheets of rain that blurred everything into a shadowy haze. Azure's heart thudded in his chest, matching the rhythm of the thunder above. The storm raged not only outside but within him, a maelstrom of anger, fear, and a deep-seated hunger for vengeance.

His horse's hooves pounded the ground, the sound swallowed by the relentless downpour. Behind him, his soldiers were mere silhouettes against the rolling clouds. Their shouts were lost to the wind, their cries turning into echoes in the tempest. As they drew closer to the makeshift camp, the true horror began to reveal itself from the shadows.

Twisted abominations slithered into view, their forms grotesque and unnatural, as wax figures melted under a cruel flame. Their limbs jerked as if controlled by an unseen hand, and their skin stretched tight over warped bones, glistening with rain, gray and veined like rotting wood. Their faces-if they could be called faces-were nightmarish, twisted into expressions of insatiable hunger, eyes glinting like shards of broken glass.

The stench hit Azure first-foul and sickening, like rotting meat left out in the sun, his lungs coiling into the wind. He gagged, his stomach churning, bile rising in his throat. Every breath tasted of decay, a sickly-sweet odor mingling with the metallic tang of blood still warm from earlier skirmishes.

The sound they made was worse. The abominations didn't roar or scream; they gurgled, a wet, sloshing noise as if their lungs were filled with sludge. Their bones cracked and popped with every step, a sound that sliced through the rain like dry twigs snapping-jarring, unsettling.

The soldiers faltered, faces pale as terror crept into their eyes. But Azure couldn't stop. His need to prove he was more than just a prince propelled him forward.

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He drew the dagger at his side, the blade catching what little light pierced the gloom. Power thrummed in his veins, alive and insistent. This is what makes me different, he thought, what makes me worthy to be my father's son. The blade gleamed like a predator's fang as he glanced at it, then back at the horrors ahead.

Without hesitation, he slashed the dagger across his forearm. Pain flared-sharp and immediate-but it was a small price for the power that surged through him like a dam breaking. His blood ignited, red as flame, spilling from his veins like molten metal. The rain hissed and sizzled against it as his blood hit the ground, steam curling around his feet like tendrils of smoke.

In that moment, he became a storm within the storm, blood coiled around him, then shot outward, twisting into jagged spikes that erupted from the earth like crimson thorns. They tore through the air, hungry and wild, seeking out the abominations. The creatures screeched, their bodies impaled by the red spikes, pinned like insects on a pin. Their distorted limbs flailed; their grotesque bodies twitched, yet they still reached for him.

Each spike was a shard of his will, a manifestation of the rage boiling inside him. But even as the abominations fell, he could feel the cost weighing on him. His head grew heavy, his breath came in ragged gasps, and the world around him seemed to dim, like a candle flickering in the wind.

"Azure!" Sir Goren's voice cut through the haze, distant as if echoed across a canyon. Azure blinked, struggling to focus, but the essence still thrummed through him, blurring the edges of reality. Goren surged ahead, his sword glinting in the storm, cutting down an abomination that had survived the initial wave of spikes.

Azure had miscalculated; even if it was just slightly, it was a mistake; a spike crimson in color missed its lethal streak on an abomination.

The creature, half-crumpled but not yet dead, lunged forward, its movements jerky and wrong, like a spider with broken legs. Its claws, jagged and long, slashed out from the shadows, raking across Goren's back. The sound was sickening, a wet tearing noise that sliced through the rain. Goren's horse stumbled as its side was split open. The horse met the ground with a wet bang, Sir Goren's breath hitching as he fell to his knees, blood pouring from the wound like dark wine spilling from a shattered cup.

"No!" Azure's scream tore from his throat, raw and desperate. His limbs felt like lead, the energy drained from him by his father's relentless spark, a ravenous hunger. He forced his horse forward; the storm seemed to have a favor for him as each strike of lightning kept him from passing out.

He stumbled off his horse and collapsed beside Goren, his knees sinking into the mud. The knight's chest rose and fell in shallow, broken breaths. Blood soaked the ground beneath him, mingling with the rain, turning the earth into a crimson pool.

"I'm... sorry," Azure whispered, his voice barely audible over the storm. His hands trembled as he took Goren's, but the knight's fingers were cold, his strength slipping away like sand through Azure's grasp; Azure tried to squeeze tighter, irrational belief. It may keep him anchored to life.

"Sophia?" Goren rasped through, words barely more than a breath before his eyes closed, leaving Azure alone in the storm's fury