"All you did," Soren said, his voice a jagged edge of grinding tectonic plates, "was strip me of my humanity. You didn't forge a tool, Vetra. You forged a monster. You took a child and hollowed him out until there was nothing left but the frost and the void."
He stood rigid, his posture a testament to a deep, unhealed wound that bled invisible ice.
Every word was a rejection of the grand narrative she had woven... the myth of the benevolent, necessary architect.
He wasn't her masterpiece; he was her victim, and the crown he wore felt like a circle of thorns she had hammered into his brow.
Vetra didn't flinch. She simply smiled, a thin, paper-cut expression of unbothered pride. She gave a languid shrug of her shoulders.
