The drain didn’t "slam" into Finn. It anchored into him like rusted hooks, and for the first time, I felt the sickening, rhythmic pull of his soul leaving his body.
I didn't just take his energy; I siphoned his history. My fingers sank into his chest—not touching the skin, but pressing into the muscle as if he were made of wet clay. I heard the wet, frantic thud of his heart trying to beat against the vacuum. I saw his memories leak into my mind: the smell of Sarah’s pine-scented hearth, the way he’d looked at a girl named Lyra yesterday, the weight of the first training sword Silas had given him.
"Finn! No!" Sarah’s shriek wasn't a sound; it was a physical tear in the atmosphere. She lunged, but the gray mist around us acted like a wall of pressurized ice, tossing her back into the slus
