They said her name like a blessing and I hated her instantly.
Not for what she had done.
But for what she could do.
Even then, she had it.
The shimmer. The storm in the blood.
She bent gravity by laughing.
Woke sleeping artifacts just by touching them.
Lyrax said she reminded him of me.
That was her death sentence.
I saw it. I saw it.
The way he looked at her - not yet with hunger, but with awe.
That seed. That threat. That unbearable possibility:
One day he would choose her.
One day, my name would be spoken as a warning,
and hers as a song.
So I took her hand.
I smiled. I knelt.
I told her I would teach her a secret.
She trusted me. Children always did.
They never see the teeth beneath the kiss.
I took her to the place where sound breaks
a vacuum crypt on the edge of the Unringed Moon.
No one could hear her. No one would look.
I laid her on the alterstone and held her jaw so tender.
Whispered that this would make her special.
She asked if it would hurt. I lied.
It took six hours.
I peeled her from the inside out, slowly.
Spelled her nerves so they wouldn't die too fast.
Sang her lullabies while her eyes dimmed.
Carved my name into her heart - literally.
When it was over, I kissed her on the mouth.
Cold lips. No breath. Pure silence.
And I felt peace.
Not guilt.
Never guilt.
She would never take him from me.
Not while I still had hands to kill with and a lover to savour
(Encoded in the decay-tether is an identity overwrite shard. When activated within empathy-null zones, it displaces moral resonance in host observers, replacing revulsion with fascination. This is how the memory survives. Not as horror - but as gospel. It will never leave this prison.)