The blood that flowed from Selena's self-inflicted wound was not red as human blood should be. It emerged from her aspect-form as liquid darkness streaked with ember-light, carrying within it the corruption of the revenants' suffering, the weight of her transformation, the essence of what she had become since the damned souls had named her their queen. Each drop fell toward the shard of the Hollow with a sound like distant screaming, like memory dying, like hope being processed into something it was never meant to be.
Dante watched in helpless fury as the Hollow's remnant drank her blood with obscene eagerness. The shard pulsed with each drop it consumed, growing slightly more substantial, slightly more real. And the chains—those invisible constraints of decree and expectation—began to dissolve where the blood touched them, transforming back into potential, into possibility, into the formless state that preceded manifestation.
