Chapter 13: Bloodline

It happens slowly.

Too slowly.

At first, I think it’s the dust from the shattered walls settling—fine particles drifting through the sunlight like ash after a fire. My hands are still pressed to my father’s chest, slick with blood, my vision tunneling, my ears ringing so loudly I can barely hear myself breathing.

Then his body changes.

The skin beneath my palms loses resistance.

Not slack. Not cold.

It thins.

“Dad…?” My voice cracks, barely a sound.

The wound in his chest no longer bleeds. The blood dries instantly, turning dark, then gray.

His fingers—his fingers—begin to crumble at the edges, breaking apart like burnt paper.

“No,” I whisper. “No—no—no—”

Ezra freezes beside me.

“What the hell…” he breathes.

My father’s face collapses inward, features softening, then dissolving entirely as his body turns to ash beneath my hands. The weight disappears. The warmth vanishes.

All that’s left is dust.

A pile of fine, gray dust where my father had been seconds ago.

The room is silent.

Dead