Severia moved to his body after 2 minutes had passed, allowing ample time for any tricks or surprises.
She checked his pulse and other signs to see if he was truly dead, her fingers pressing against his neck, his wrist, his chest.
And she found nothing. No heartbeat. No breath. No flicker of the soul that had once animated this form.
The man who had been so powerful, so confident, was now nothing more than a cooling corpse on the wooden floor of his love nest.
Since his soul was not fluctuating like a burning flame, it indicated it had fully died and would soon depart from the vessel that had once housed it.
There was no residual energy or fading ember of consciousness that might reignite given time.
The soul-severing properties of her knife had done their work completely and irrevocably, cutting the connection between spirit and body with surgical precision that left no room for recovery.
"Mission complete..." Severia sighed and closed the man's eye lids with her palms.
