!exclusive! - Ex-load Leech

The parasite convulsed. Its filaments retracted, recoiling from the abyss inside Kael’s chest. It tried to detach, but Kael’s hand—slow, but now with a flicker of his own dark purpose—clamped over it. He felt its panic like a tiny, wet scream.

He squeezed.

Kael stumbled, his rifle clattering into the muck. The Leech was on him. He didn't see it—he felt it. A thing of translucent cartilage and needle-fine filaments, it fused to his cervical spine, its body flattening against his skin like a second layer of frost. It weighed nothing. And then the feeding began. ex-load leech

The smell of rain on asphalt. Erased.

Ten years ago, in a different war, on a different mud-ball planet, a shard of shrapnel had shredded his heart. He’d flatlined for ninety-seven seconds. The medics had dragged him back, but something had come with him—a splinter of the void. A little pocket of nothing that lived behind his ribs, patient and cold. Most days, he ignored it. But the Leech, in its ravenous feeding, found it. The parasite convulsed

The Leech tasted the void.