Vadim PoV
A bit earlier.
I laid on the former lake shore, staring off into the still dark sky. Bulgae was gone... but so was my Amelia. She was gone.
Bulgae had let my blade cut deeper into his heart, his final words lost to a silent, tragic resignation, and then the world had dissolved into fire. But none of that mattered. The dog was dead, the explosion was roaring in the heavens, and my hands were empty.
Noel knelt beside me, sighing. "Your wounds... they healed by themselves, cousin."
I barely registered his words.
My chest rose and fell against the cold, damp earth, but the familiar ache of torn muscle and cracked bone had vanished, replaced by an eerie, hollow numbness. My body had knit itself back together in the dark, driven by an instinct that didn't feel like mine. Yet the hollow on my heart felt wider than any wound a blade could carve.
