The darkness came slowly at first, creeping in at the edges of Selena's consciousness like ink bleeding through paper. She lay on the exposed bedrock of what had been the marrow sea, her body wracked with coughs that brought up silver-threaded blood, and felt herself beginning to dissolve. Not physically—her flesh remained intact, her wings still spread beneath her—but something deeper was unraveling, something fundamental to who she was.
The blood-fire had marked her. Scarred her. And now it was claiming her in a way she hadn't anticipated.
She could feel her sense of self fragmenting, memories becoming untethered from the core of her being and drifting away like leaves on a current. She tried to hold onto them, tried to remember who she was, but it was like grasping smoke. Was she an angel? Yes, but that felt distant, unimportant. Was she a rebel? Perhaps, but rebellion required a self to rebel, and hers was slipping away.
