I knew I could not waste time. This battle had made far too much noise, and someone would be here any second now. My fingers were still trembling as I pressed my palm against Elira's chest, the aftertaste of blood and smoke lingering at the back of my throat. My breathing felt shallow, uneven, as if my lungs had forgotten how to fully expand. If I said I was not nervous, I would be lying.
For the first time since arriving in this world, the thought of fleeing crept into my mind, quiet but persistent. My shoulders felt heavy, weighed down by everything that had just happened, and my heartbeat refused to slow, no matter how hard I tried to steady it.
I wondered if I had made the right choice at all. Perhaps I should have known it would never be this simple to steal the Qillin bones, that the original story was already splintering into a branch I did not recognize.
