Heart rent by Heartsbane, life bled from Kieran in an unending torrent as he lay on his side.
Despite the efflux of vitality, Kieran's eyes remained firm, and his fist clenched. This was all a foolhardy move on his part, seeming more moronic than anything else, but it was a daft stunt pulled with a possibly valuable payoff.
But everything banked on the resistance and adhesion of his blood.
An average person would be killed the moment their heart was eviscerated by an unfathomable blade or simply had a gaping wound in their solar plexus, but Kieran was far from an average person and had not died immediately.
His blood, carrying the properties of his obsession to defy, refused to pour out of him in the stream that it should. But that was a challenging endeavor. His blood sought to remain one, and a strange power sought to break that bond in equal measure, creating a constantly shifting impasse that left Kieran in a world of pain.