The path itself recoiled from the bodies.
No insects touched the bodies. No scavengers came. Even the creeping moss that swallowed everything else along Ravenspire Path skirted wide around them, as though the land itself knew better than to touch them.
Slowly, what didn't work... seemed to have been working.
Liam's attempt at fracturing fate. In forcing them back to life. Little by little.
For Sylas, death was not silence. It was darkness pressing in from all sides.
At first, it felt like falling. It was an endless, soundless descent, with nothing to anchor him to himself. He could not feel his body, and could not feel pain anymore. That alone told him he was no longer alive.
Then the shadows spoke.
Erebos had never truly left him. Even when Cain snapped his neck, or even when his body burned until there was nothing left to recognise. The fragment had clung to what remained of Sylas's soul like a brand that refused to fade.
