The ruins didn’t collapse with a roar. They died with a sigh.
Stone pillars groaned and folded like tired old men as the deflected orbital strike rained debris around us. Dust and ash choked the air, turning the night into a gray shroud. I stood in the middle of it, chest heaving, blood still leaking from my nose and the fresh gashes Lyra had left on my shoulders. The pre-heat hadn’t faded. It had settled into a low, vicious simmer — a constant, shameful pulse between my legs that made every step feel like betrayal. My empty womb throbbed with the memory of the child the silver had stolen, and the Hollow laughed softly at the irony: I had survived by becoming the very thing that devoured life.
Lyra lay crumpled against a broken obelisk, her white hair matted with blood and dust. She wasn
