CRACK—
RIIIIIIP—
The sound came before the blood. A wet, tearing rip that silenced every voice in the vicinity, cutting through the distant sirens and the murmuring crowd.
Then the blood came. It sprayed from Ruby's severed throat in a hot, arterial fountain, painting Arzhen's face and chest and outstretched arms in broad, grotesque stripes of crimson.
Her body, still standing for one horrible moment, convulsed. The heart still pumping, the nerves still firing, the limbs still twitching with the ghost of life, before it crumpled to the ground in a heap of mud-stained white robes and spreading red.
The blood pooled beneath her, dark and glistening in the moonlight, seeping into the earth like an offering to gods who were not listening.
Arzhen stood in the center of the carnage, Ruby's head clutched in his hands. Her long pink hair, once so lustrous, was now matted with gore, the strands wrapped around his fingers like ribbons.
