Ruining Draco
The emblem on the pendant caught the fractured light: a snake and a dragon coiled around a sword and shield.
I didn’t know why that symbol terrified me more than the carnage, but something inside me clicked. Execution... a message, this was not random terror... it was a meticulously planned purge.
The men vanished as quickly as they had appeared, disappearing into the broken arches, their laughter echoing down the nave. An oppressive silence settled, the kind that follows a funeral, heavy and suffocating. Blood seeped across the marble toward me, a slow tide of inevitability.
When the gunfire ceased, I lay still, breath shallow, my mind a whirl of disbelief and numbness. Time stretched, each