[Emma's POV]
The shadow-construct was an abomination of intimacy. It wasn't a mere silhouette; it was a living sculpture of me, rendered in a substance that drank the light—a perfect, negative-image twin carved from sentient void. Its presence was a physical violation, a cold, slithering annex to my own consciousness.
I could feel its existence as a phantom limb, one that answered to my most primal emotions but danced to Damon’s silent, commanding tune. A spike of my own terror, sharp and metallic on my tongue, caused the shadow’s edges to harden into blade-like precision. A surge of my helpless rage at the brothers’ peril made it vibrate with a low, subsonic hum that set the very fillings in my teeth aching.
It was a funhouse mirror of my power, warped and weaponized, turning my vuln
