The knight knelt, boots crunching softly against the soot-laced stone floor, the air around him choked with the acrid smell of charred flesh and scorched cloth. His fingers hovered near one of the iron stakes that pierced the woman's body, its blackened shaft jutting from her side like a cruel monument. He hesitated, the tip of his gauntlet barely brushing the edge of the nail, which radiated an unnatural warmth, as if it had never stopped burning.
"D-don't touch those!" The vampire hunter's voice cracked like dried bark, raw and strained as he staggered forward. His arm hung limply by his side, bones likely cracked from the blow he'd taken from that scorched figure, the one who still lay trembling and pierced like a relic.
