The sky was bleeding silver above them.
Storm clouds had vanished, replaced by cosmic cracks—threads of raw emotion slithering across the stars like veins. Below, in the shattered ruins of HOPE's courtyard, time seemed to stop.
Sara stood alone, wind rippling through her torn cloak.
Her skin shimmered with residual light. Cuts on her arms glowed faintly green, leaking warmth instead of blood. She was burning up from the inside.
And still, she stood.
Across from her floated Elaine
The woman's wings were vast now—obsidian-tinted appendages that stretched across the battlefield like storm shutters. Each feather contained memories not her own, twitching with grief, rage, loss, ecstasy, hunger. Her eyes were no longer human. Just glassy fragments of everything she'd stolen.
A black sphere hovered between her hands, trembling violently.
It pulsed. Then screamed.
The voices of the dead.
The forgotten.
The unloved.
