Replaced by His First Love
Phoenix sobbed.
The breakdown was total. The Queen of Rebirth was dead, buried under the rubble of a mother’s catastrophic failure. Her legs gave out, her knees slamming into the grit of the cave floor with a bone-jarring thud she didn't even register. Tears—hot, salt-heavy, and uncontrollable—cascaded down her face, cutting tracks through the gray soot on her cheeks. She bit her lip so hard the iron taste of blood flooded her mouth, a desperate, futile attempt to anchor herself as her mind spiraled into the image of her son becoming nothing more than a pile of gray dust in a New York basement she never truly escaped.