The titan corpse lay steaming in the dawn, sixty feet of ruined meat and broken seals. Sous knelt beside it, still in her titan form, skin torn, ribs stoved in, blood still leaking from every seam.
The blue fire in her eyes had dulled to embers, but hunger, raw, ancient, and unstoppable, burned hotter than any seal. She pressed both shaking palms to the torn chest cavity where the core had once pulsed. Black blood oozed between her fingers like warm tar.
She opened her mouth.
Jaws unhinged far past human limits, bones cracking, skin splitting at the corners as the toad-wolf maw returned one final time. She bit down.
Flesh parted like wet silk. She tore away a slab the size of a war shield, tendons snapping, fat globules bursting against her tongue. The taste was rot, copper, sulfur, and power. She swallowed without chewing. The chunk slid down her throat, burning, expanding, forcing her neck to distend grotesquely before it settled in her stomach like molten and alive.
She buried her face in the open torso and ate. Teeth ripped through muscle cords thick as hawser ropes. She swallowed lungs that still tried to inflate, hearts that still tried to beat. Black marrow jetted across her cheeks.
She cracked ribs between her molars like sugar candy, sucking the marrow out in thick ropes. Every bite sent violet seal-light racing under her skin, knitting wounds even as new ones opened from the strain of consumption.
Zhiliary's twelve severed arms twitched on the ground. Sous crawled to them on hands and knees, dragging her ruined body through the lake of blood. She seized one wrist and bit the skull-cluster clean off the elbow.
Lamprey mouths snapped uselessly against her cheeks before she crushed them between her jaws and swallowed the entire forearm in three convulsing gulps. The stolen limb slid down her throat like a living serpent, fighting all the way.
She moved to the next arm, and the next, tearing them from their sockets, devouring flesh, bone, claw, and seal alike. Her belly swelled, skin stretching translucent, veins glowing violet and blue as the Alpha's power flooded her.
Ribs that had been shattered forced themselves back into place with wet pops. Torn muscle reknit in thick cables. Her spine lengthened audibly, vertebrae grinding taller.
She reached the rotating head-cluster last. Eight muzzles still weakly snapped at air. Sous wrapped both arms around it, lifted the dripping mass, and forced it into her widening maw. Jaws stretched until ligaments tore and blood ran from the corners of her mouth in rivers. She swallowed once, twice, throat bulging impossibly as the entire head slid down in one continuous, obscene motion. Her neck distended to the width of a barrel before the mass dropped into her gut with a sound like a boulder hitting deep water.
Sous collapsed forward onto all fours, belly distended, skin glowing with trapped seal-light.
The titan corpse deflated before her eyes, meat dissolving into black sludge that flowed uphill into her open mouth. Every drop, every shred, every fragment of Zhiliary poured into her until nothing remained except scorched earth and the echo of a final, muffled scream inside her chest.
She rose slowly and before her, sixty feet of corrupted Alpha now lived inside one broken woman. Her eyes burned twin suns, one blue, one violet. Claws flexed longer than before, dripping mixed blood. Bones cracked and resettled, taller, broader, no longer entirely human, no longer entirely wolf, something new and terrible wearing Sous like armor.
The morning wind carried the stench of burnt seals and devoured god across the ruined gardens. Sous tilted her head back and exhaled a plume of black fire that painted the sky for a heartbeat.
Then she turned toward the palace where faint voices still called her name, and began walking, belly full, wounds closed, carrying every ounce of Zhiliary's power in her veins like a second heartbeat that would never, ever stop.
Those faint voices were Shadow and Faye waving her down. Both impressed at her size; it was just amazing to see.