She floated in the absence.
Am I dead?
It felt like death. Which, honestly, would’ve been a pretty anticlimactic end to the story. She didn’t even know if she’d succeeded. Had her crew survived? Were the Wraith trapped?
There was only silence and uncertainty.
Then—more pain. Sickly green light split through her mind. She couldn’t move or even open her mouth to scream.
She tried to pull away from it, to rise from whatever hell had taken her, but there was no release. Only endless agony.
Time stretched. How long? She couldn’t tell.
Eventually, she managed to reassemble the fragments of her thoughts long enough to open her eyes. And what she saw shattered what little peace she had left.
She wasn’t dead. She was very much alive. Suspended in a floating orb-like construct, her limbs, neck, and tail were stretched to the brink, held by an invisible, electric current, stinging her constantly.
The Wraith were there, too, their voices rasping around her, murmuring with anticipation. Shadows leaned against the orb as greedy eyes watched her.
Terror dawned. They were feeding off her. She was keeping them alive in this Emptiness.
One of the creatures stepped forward, its taloned hand breaching the orb’s surface. There was no resistance, just the sickening glide through something half-formed and wet. Her muscles flexed, trying to flee, but escape was beyond her.
She felt the intrusion then, not as pain at first, but pressure—unnatural and precise—cutting through her sternum, slipping between bone and sinew, until ice closed around one of her hearts.
It squeezed, and agony ripped through her, bowing her spine and dropping her jaw in a soundless cry. Blood thundered in her ears, and still the cage held, crushing her. Hersecond heart stuttered, fighting to compensate, every beat of it sending shards of torment knifing through her ribs.
Strands of her life force unraveled, drawn from her in bright, burning threads as shreds of her soul were ripped free, one by one. But the orb pulsed in rhythm, sending fresh waves of lightning crackling through her nerves, spurring her body to fix itself.
And when that Wraith finished, another took its place. Then another. On and on.
No end.
Each cycle brought new anguish, and the orb continued to revive her despite the damage. It was like drowning, over and over. She would surface only long enough to gulp the air before being pulled under again. She couldn’t die. The orb wouldn’t allow it. It was feeding her to them, piece by piece. And she was utterly helpless to stop it.
Her head hung as another taloned hand worked its way past her spine, lips pulling back in face of the torment.
The plan had worked.
The Wraith were no longer part of the Weaving.
She didn’t know where they were now, or how she had managed to survive. The Weaving, which had always hummed beneath her scales with its subtle ring of life and continuity, was gone, absent now.
But the plan had worked. If she could have laughed, she would have.
The pain didn’t care. It continued without pause, stripping her with every pass.
Time did not exist here. It might have been hours, days, or longer.
It went on and on, until, one moment, it didn’t.
No!Her whole body convulsed, splintering the orb’s hold.
In an instant everything paused, and the half of her soul that belonged to her mate disintegrated within her.
The agony that followed could not even be classified as pain. No word in any language ever spoken could capture it. Every cell in her body raged against her, each one screaming in isolation, as if she were being disassembled molecule by molecule.
It was beyond any construct of understanding.
