The darkness wasn't empty. It was heavy, suffocating, and tasted of old iron and ozone.
I was floating in a void, disconnected from my physical body. The burning fever of the pre-heat was gone, and the sharp, devastating ache of my loss had been replaced by a flat, terrifying numbness. But the worst part wasn't the silence of my own body.
It was the silence in my mind.
The blood pact—the thin, glowing thread of silver and gold that had connected my soul to Silas’s for weeks—was gone. There was no pull, no shared heartbeat, no echo of his fierce, protective growls. It was as if a limb had been violently amputated, leaving only a screaming, phantom void.
Silas... I tried to call out, but I had no voice.
Then, like a thunderclap echoing in the dark, the sensory overload hit me all at onc
