For a long, paralyzed moment, I do nothing but stare at her, unable to comprehend what my eyes see but my heart refuses to accept.

And then a raw, inhuman sound tore from my chest – half agony, half rage.

It echoed through the empty corridors, through the heavens, across the very bones of the earth.

The scent of iron and lotus fills the chamber. One the perfume of death, the other the memory of life.

And I cannot tell them apart now.

I clutch her body closer, pressing my hand desperately against her throat, trying to stem the pulsing flow that slicks my fingers.

“Please, Neferet, don’t,” I whisper fiercely, lowering my head so our foreheads touch. Her skin is already cooling. “Please, don’t leave me, my love. Not ever, not like this…”

Her eyelids flutter weakly, but no words form on her lips, only a faint, wet gasp that shudders through her. Her chest rises once… falters… rises again.

Panic threatens to drown me, but I force it back. “No. Not now.”

Shifting her gently against my body, cradling her as though I could shield her from death itself, I close my eyes and reach inward.

Toward the divine fragment of Osiris that has been my curse and my weapon since birth.

I have never used its healing powers on another person before.

I had always assumed the connection was too selfish, too anchored to my own flesh. But surely – surely – with enough will, with enough love, I can channel it into her.

It must.

So I summon everything within me.

“By the name of Osiris, by the ancient blood, by the sacred ties of Pharaoh and Horus, heal!”

I thrust the force of my soul outward, willing the divine energy into her broken body… but nothing happens.

A tremor of confusion breaks through my terror.

I draw deeper – past pain, past exhaustion, reaching for the endless ocean of power I have always known would answer me.

Still nothing.

And that’s when I understand.

For the first time in my life – the weight I had borne since childhood – the constant, silent pull of Osiris’s fragment against my soul… It was gone.

Not lessened. Not muted. Gone.

The pressure I have lived with my entire life, the ever-present ache in my chest, the divine heaviness of god, is now completely gone. Vanished.

I can feel it now as clearly as one feels the loss of a limb.

The divine fragment, the curse itself has been torn away… and with it, all the power I might have used to save her.

A broken sob tears from my throat.

“What have you done, Neferet…” I whisper, rocking her limp body. “What have you done, my love?”

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