While Merek lay sprawled on the rooftop, the world around him seemed to slow. Inside his mind, profound changes were unfolding. The space of his will, once confined and rigid, stretched outward like a rubber band being drawn wider and wider.
With each subtle expansion, his thoughts sharpened, his perception grew clearer, as though the fog that clouded the edges of his awareness was burning away under an inner sun.
For a fleeting moment, Merek was weightless in that rare clarity, as if he could see and grasp the threads of the world itself. But the world wasn't about to let him linger in that serenity.
A sudden shadow fell over him, blotting out the sun. Merek's eyes snapped up, his sharpened senses catching the torn, bloodied tissues beneath the feet of a hopper irregular, its legs mangled from the sheer force of its monstrous leaps.
Snarling, its hands outstretched like claws, it plunged down toward him, intent to crush, to devour.
