The shaft of sunlight cut through the gloom like a falling monolith. Splinters of ancient redwood the size of javelins rained down, whistling through the air as the canopy tore open.
The sky descended.
The System labeled it a [Solar Avian-Elemental] (Level 75+), but the numbers were a joke. Its wingspan stretched the width of a collapsed freeway overpass, forged from roaring solar fire and metallic ash. It didn't have feathers. It had blades of crystallized heat that hummed with the sound of grinding stone.
"Great," Don muttered, shielding his eyes with a gloved hand. "A giant, flying space-heater. Because the humidity in this tree wasn't doing enough to ruin my afternoon."
"Space-heater?" Elias hissed, his neon-blue [Oversight Eye] spinning with a frantic, electronic whine. A thin trail of smoke curled from the edge of his socket. "Don, my hardware is currently trying to uninstall its own drivers. This thing isn't a bird. It's a localized extinction event with a beak."
