[The lights flicker on again, as though in slow motion, reaching the level of lighting one might expect of a fever dream. The world is dim, the blood on the floor black, the shadows pooling at Kirk's feet things alive, twisting and jerking and undulating.]
[One twists itself apart, a slender line of darkness that grows longer, thicker, more substantial. It might have been counted a figure, might have been counted as a woman, but nothing human ever had so many rasping tendrils, so many bits of shadow vying to resolve themselves into the shape of something natural.]