Elder Thomas “Very well,” the Matriarch says, it’s the first time she is speaking since I came in. Her voice calm in the way a sharpened knife is calm before it cuts. “It seems we have no more use for you.” The bottom falls out of my stomach. “No, no, wait—please—” I stumble back a step, hands raised, heart pounding so hard I hear it in my ears. She lifts a single, elegant hand. The pain is instant. Agony like fire and ice crawling under my skin, peeling me apart. I scream — a raw, inhuman sound that echoes from the walls — but it does not move them. I fall to my knees, every nerve set ablaze. I clutch my head, my chest, my very skin, as the power they had given me — the stolen strength, the unnatural vitality, the binding magic — begins to tear itself out of me. Receiving their gift had been an ecstasy beyond imagining. But this… this is agony. A slow, exquisite peeling of my soul. I feel it with every cell in my body. The youth draining from me. Wrinkles begin to fiss
Last Updated : 2025-04-28 Read more