The medical bay aboard the Bloodletter had become a pilgrimage site of sorts. For three days, representatives from across the Sovereign Confluence had come to witness what Lyralei had become—not the crimson-eyed tyrant who had once commanded through supernatural dominion, but a pale, exhausted woman whose humanity had been purchased with the sacrifice of everything that had made her more than human.
Reed sat beside her recovery bed, his augmented fingers intertwined with her now-fragile ones. The contrast was stark—his hands still hummed with dimensional energy and cybernetic enhancement, while hers were simply flesh and bone, marked with the scars of battles fought with power she no longer possessed.
"The headaches are getting worse," Lyralei admitted quietly, her voice hoarse from the strain of existing without the supernatural buffers that had sustained her for years. "Every thought feels... exposed. Raw. Is this what normal people experience all the time?"
