The moon hung high over the temple ruins, pale and watchful, its light spilling through the cracked ceiling like threads of hope trying to reach the ground. Selene sat exactly where she had been for hours, her fingers still pressed over Darius’s chest. The faint heartbeat she had felt earlier was real, weak, fragile, but there.

It wasn’t enough.

Every rise of his chest felt slower than the last, every beat fainter. She could feel his soul slipping again, like sand through her hands, no ...