Noah watched THE Verdant Regard bleed in the Fiend's arms, and his mind kept turning.
Shinjitsu.
He had watched an Ancient Immense One unleash an entire orchard of power, an eye that swallowed the sky, a whole region of existence turned into a weapon, and he had watched it slide off a faint black film as rain slides off glass. Half of one percent was all it had taken.
And then the Giant had spoken its verdict over her.
You are not alive.
He understood it now, a little. Everything she had thrown at it had been grand and borrowed. Her title, her Legacy's rules, the fear others felt when they heard her name. She had worn all of it so long that she had forgotten what was underneath, and when a thing with almost nothing borrowed left on it had reached for what was underneath, it had found very little there at all.
How much of him would it find?
He disliked how quickly that question came to him.
