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Prologue

Deep in the Pennsylvania Mountains

1934

The metallic stench of blood permeated the air Pine needles and leaves cushioned each step, as the rowls Blood trickled frole of huh bark of a tree Ezekiel knew then, there was no salvation left for his brother

Their heightened sense of s stench of littered corpses laced the wind Underbrush, slickened by sticky massacre Blood traveled like little tributaries into the nearby brook, dying the shalloaters red

Greedy snarls tangled with hungry grunts as Ezekiel and the hunters eased in, none of thereeted the the slaughter before hirace this earth, bared his fangs and screeched an unholy, predatory groarning them not to take another step

A knot of bloodied lirip so intense, his nails embedded in the lifeless woman’s flesh She was not hisin his eyes as he gored himself on female mortal, after fe half of his soul

“He’s feeish,” one hunter wheezed, while others gagged over the stench of carnage “Step aside, Ezekiel You shouldn’t have to watch”

He couldn’t rotesque i to hold it there for eternity This is what becaentle people when God’s call was not heeded This was his brother’s forsaken fate

A trail of genocide lay in Isaiah’s wake, and as Ezekiel stared upon the massacre, he felt responsible, on some level, for the criluttony of a madman—an animal—whose peaceful nature had been snuffed away

“Isaiah, what have I let you becoedy before him