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Fire surrounds it.

A perfect circle of flames burns around the clearing, too even to be natural, rising high enough to turn everything beyond it into a wall of black smoke.

And in the center…

My feet stop.

Ezra.

He’s on his knees.

For one horrible second, that’s all my mind lets me understand.

Then I see the rest.

Roots have wrapped around his arms so tightly his hands are turning dark. More cross his chest and waist, pinning him upright, while one coils around his throat and disappears beneath the collar of his shirt.

But it’s his face that destroys me.

The Sower mask is still there.

Except he isn’t wearing it anymore.

It has become part of him.

The pale surface disappears into the skin around his temples and jaw, flesh swollen and torn where wood meets bone. Black veins spread outward from beneath it, crawling across his cheeks and down his neck.

And the stitched mouth…

“Oh my God.”

The cord isn’t threaded through the mask anymore.

It’s threaded through Ezra.

Thick black stitches pierce one side of his mouth and pull through the other, sealing his lips shut.

Blood runs between them.

Down his chin.

Over his throat.

Onto his shirt.

His head hangs forward.

Completely still.

Something inside my chest caves in.

“Ezra?”

Nothing.

I take a step toward the fire.

“Ezra.”