Chapter 55. The Collapse

The body at Aeryn’s feet did not bleed. Instead, a deep hush filled the vaulted chamber as the corpse seemed to disintegrate from within. First, the flesh crumbled, fine as ash caught on a breeze, drifting in pale motes that swirled above the mildew-stained tiles. Each exhalation of wind set the dust dancing in erratic currents, like the last sigh of a dying star. Then the veins peeled apart as if sewn with fraying thread, each dark cord unspooling upward in delicate arcs before dissolving into nothing. Ribbons of hair lifted from the skull in twisting spirals, their soft rustle humming through the stale air. And the face—once a shifting nightmare of snarling features—relaxed, the lines melting into uniform grains of dust. It was not death. It was not peace. It was erasure.

Aeryn remained on her knees a heartbeat longer, boots pressing into cold, slick stone. A single breath misted before her, imprinting a ghost on the floor for a moment, then fading. She did not close her eye