[Emma's POV]
The journey back to the Blackwood manor was a grim, silent funeral march through a forest I had helped mutilate. Jaxon carried me, my body a dead weight against the solid wall of his chest, my head lolling with each determined stride.
The erratic, frightened flutter of my own heartbeat was a trapped sparrow against his ribs—skipping, racing, stuttering in a rhythm that spoke of a system in shock. Behind my closed eyelids, the world wasn't dark. It was a flickering negative of the clearing, shadows dancing at the edges of my perception—not memories, but *presences*, the ghostly after-echo of the sentient darkness that had sprung from my soul, restless and whispering, not yet willing to be fully reabsorbed.
The heavy oak door of the mansion groaned shut, sealing us in a tomb
