Bright Morgan sat alone on the broken step behind the ruined watch-hut, the cold northern wind cutting across the yard like a serrated blade. Night had fallen fully now, yet the air still smelled faintly of blood, burnt resin, and the sweet, metallic tang of ruptured crystal cores.
He stared at his hands.
Not because of the dried blood caked beneath the fingernails.
Not because they were trembling.
But because of what they held—what he had taken.
Two crystal cores from Larkin's corpse lay in his palm, one a dull amethyst flecked with silver (the mind muffle core), the other a shimmering white moted with fractured strands of gold (the body enhancement core that had partly fused with Larkin over years). Both pulsed faintly, as if breathing.
They should not be here.
No core should survive a human host without undergoing immediate ethereal dissipation. They were supposed to liquefy into astral vapor the moment the host died, drifting into the night like evaporating dew.
