I stared at the head.
It lay at my feet, resting in a pool of blood that was still spreading across the floorboards, slow and patient, like it was searching for something else to claim. The neck was a ragged mess of torn flesh and snapped bone. The blood that leaked from it was already starting to darken and thicken.
The one remaining eye was still open.
That eye was looking at nothing in this world. But it felt like it was looking at me. It felt like Roran was watching me from somewhere far away, waiting for me to do something, say something.
The weight of that gaze pressed down on my chest like a second corpse, crushing me with expectations I had never asked for and could never hope to meet.
Roran...
The name stuck in my throat. I could not say it. I could not whisper it. I could not even think it without feeling like something was tearing inside my chest.
How did this happen...?
