[private] don't close the coffin yet; ryatah

[atrox]

hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

The anger has not left him, not yet.

It curdles in his veins—leaving him frustrated and broody and irritable. He took little pleasure in watching his undead minions destroy that small corner of Hyaline, although it had been better than the alternate, but he had found little in the way of relief since then. It had just been the endless days and the endless nights stretching out before him—leaving him alone to face the echoing of his own demons.

The fury is finally enough to drive him out of Hyaline that evening.

Enough to take him to the common lands that he so despises.

He stalks the borders as a panther, watching those that mill about with a lazy, near apathetic eye. They are lucky, he thinks, that he had hunted earlier—that he had filled his belly on the deer of the Hyaline mountains and that he did not crave anything further. Even so, there are a few that catch his attention for longer than they would have liked, had they known. Some where he imagined rending flesh from bone.

It is only when he manages to catch the sight of her glow, that ethereal porcelain against the endless sea of dark that he pauses—for once, the prey caught in the spotlight. His yellow eyes widen just slightly before he arranges his face into the casual lines, wiping his expression clean of anything but neutrality.

“Ryatah,” her name burns on his tongue and he nearly says something sarcastic, nearly says something that would surely drive her away again but nothing comes. He opens his mouth and then closes it, a frown etching its way between his eyebrows as he glances down at the ground between them.

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING