Tarran's Story - Hunger Consumes the Horizon

Tarran rips through the splintered floorboards, and the shattered binding crater breathes violet light beneath her claws. Dust whirls around her snout as she hunts the ruin for anything edible.

The Translucent Elder Apparition flickers above the broken seal, its edges thinning like smoke in a storm. It raises one translucent hand, and the residue on the stones begins to glow brighter, sour and poisonous.

The violet dust surges in a low cloud toward Tarran’s maw and joints, clinging in glittering motes to her beige hide. The remaining walls groan under her weight, but the apparition holds, pressing its judgment into the air.

Tarran noses through the wreckage and finds what the spell had hidden, a half-crushed storage cask split open in the rubble. The scent of grain and fat leaks out through the poison haze, sharp enough to pull her forward.

The apparition’s glow stutters as Tarran lunges toward the cask, proving the purge has only given her a clearer path to prey.

Tarran drives her snout into the split cask and bites down. Grain, fat, and splintered wood vanish in one brutal gulp, and the poisoned violet dust hisses off her teeth.

The cask collapses inward under her jaw. A dull crack runs through the cratered floor, and one cracked support beam gives a long, tired groan.

The Translucent Elder Apparition recoils higher, its cold glow thinning as the ward residue is swallowed with the food. It watches Tarran with rigid judgment, unable to stop her.

Tarran turns her head, scenting deeper into the ruin. Somewhere beyond the shattered hall, warm flesh and fear wait in the dark.

The floor shudders again, and a seam opens wider beside the crater, exposing more broken stone and a shadowed gap below.

Tarran follows the scent through the split floor seam, snout low, shoulders scraping broken beams. Warm flesh pulls her right, deeper into the hall’s ruined bones.

The crack widens under her weight, and loose stone slides aside to show a dark cavity below. The smell of people rises from it, sharp beneath the dust.

A pale shape flickers at the edge of the gap, then more movement below, small and frantic. Hidden voices catch in the dark, too frightened to be still.

The apparition’s glow thins above the crater, while the split seam gives another dry groan. Dust dribbles into the opening as if the floor is beginning to give up.

Tarran reaches the edge of the new gap, and the hidden cache of flesh is there at last, below the shattered stone. The ruin shivers around it, one hard jolt away from collapse.