Time slowed to a crawl, stretched out until each second felt like an eternity.
Sam's lungs still burned, his neck still strained against the grip of the monarch's gauntlet, but for the first time since the battle began, he had room to think.
The world around him moved at a hundredth of its speed.
The air hung still, every ripple of dust frozen in place, every fragment of shattered stone suspended midair.
Even the tightening of the monarch's fingers around his throat dragged on like a drawn-out death sentence.
The curse inside him, however, didn't slow.
Its grip didn't loosen.
It coiled through his soul, biting deeper, heavier than any chain.
This curse was what had claimed every other primordial before him.
None had escaped. Not one had endured it.
They all had fallen the moment they absorbed the judges' cores, their bodies and souls both undone by the vines of corruption.
The monarchs had turned the desperation of his kind into a weapon.
