Agony was a white-hot brand searing Nishanth's side with every ragged breath. The dead coin in his hand felt like a tombstone. Across the transformed plaza, Zara was a statue of defiance and corruption, Stapler Prime's targeting photoreceptor burning a hole in the air mere feet from her.
Tabitha's roars had turned to furious, impotent thrashing beneath her paperclip prison. Lilith was a shadow against the lined-paper sky, her eyes wide with horror.
Mortal. Broke. Useless. The words hammered in his skull, echoes of Lilith's pronouncement. But beneath the terror, beneath the crushing weight of his newfound fragility, a spark ignited. Not divinity.
Something older, messier, infinitely more human: spite. Mammon had broken him. Stapler Prime sought to erase him. They both saw him as obsolete, inefficient, clutter.
