Chapter 12: FallingAIR RUSHES AGAINST me. It stings my eyes and steals my breath, stripping away what little warmth I have left.
I can’t see anything, can’t feel anything except the wind of my fall. The cloying stink of decay surrounds me. I know the ground is rising to meet me. Once it does, I will not be. I sense hunger and greed and dark pleasure. The Mara wait for me.
This is not what I wanted. This is not how I’d imagined death. This is not beautiful and still. It’s not thrilling and forbidden and delicious. I don’t know what I’d hoped to feel, but this isn’t it.
Is this what they experienced, those frozen, final forms with their fixed expressions? Every corpse I’ve ever fantasized over, longing to understand what they felt and knew in those final moments. Is this what I’ve come ba
