I don't remember breathing when it happened.
I think I might have forgotten how, as though my lungs had revolted at the idea of taking in air in a world where such a thing could exist.
The obsidian greatsword slid through Salem's chest like parchment, clean, precise, inevitable. The sound it made wasn't the scream of steel but the hollow note of reality cracking at the seam, a sound so sharp it seemed to echo inside my bones rather than the chamber, as if the blade had always been destined to pierce him, and time had merely caught up.
Salem's body jerked as though electrified, his eyes widening, his teeth snapping together in a sound I hated more than any scream. He had never looked surprised in all the time I had known him—annoyed, yes, cold, yes, filled with that predatory calm of a man who lived for the cut and the kill—but not this.
