The world had dissolved into a screaming kaleidoscope of pain. Luna was no longer in the library, no longer aware of the seventeen small hands gripping hers, no longer feeling the cool floor beneath her knees. She was adrift in an ocean of shattered souls, each memory a razor-sharp shard cutting into her being. The "net" was holding, but she was the point of impact, bearing the brunt of the initial, raw force.
It was a descent into madness. She felt the gnawing emptiness of a Hungry entity stalking its first victim in a dead city. She tasted the bitter ashes of consumed civilizations. She heard the silent, desperate prayers of beings whose gods had been eaten before their very eyes. The weight of it was infinite, a pressure threatening to crush her own spark into nothingness.
