With those final words, Elvira dissolved into the shadows, a specter returning to the void.
The soundproofing barrier she had cast over the room remained cruelly intact, trapping Olivia in a suffocating bubble of agony and silence.
Olivia's throat felt as though it had been lined with glass; her body was a map of tremors, and her blood seeped into the silk sheets beneath her like spilled ink.
Burned, branded, and broken—she lay there on the precipice of consciousness, her weakening arms still coiled around baby Anne with the desperate strength of the dying.
Then—a sound. A knock. It was soft, hesitant, a stark contrast to the violence that had just transpired.
"Your Grace?" a familiar, gentle voice drifted through the wood. "It is I... Isabella. May I enter?"
Olivia tried to answer, but her lips merely parted in a silent, jagged gasp. The door creaked open regardless, and Isabella stepped into the gloom.
