The grip tightened.
A sickening squelch followed.
The High Priest's neck—broad enough to require two palms—was now compressed into one. Bones cracked like twigs. Muscle cords snapped beneath Cedric's fingers. The skin bulged and broke in places, splitting like overripe fruit beneath pressure too precise to be mortal.
Then—his eyes.
POP.
Both orbs shot forward in slow horror, bulging out of his sockets—still attached by tendrils of vision and nerve. One dangled sideways, hanging loose. The other remained halfway in.
And yet… he remained conscious.
He was still awake.
Still breathing—barely. Still hearing everything.
Still seeing—through some awful divine violation—as if his mind had been held intact just so he could witness what was happening to his body.
There was no blood.
No screams.
Only faint, ambiguous fluids escaping through his pants—liquids that fell like thick rain to the floor.
But they disappeared the moment they touched the marble.
Ssshhk.
