The North Wing was a nightmare of red lights and sterile white corridors. As we sprinted toward Room 05, the smell of iron hit me—heavy, cloying, and sweet.
Valeria was already there, her tactical team holding back a group of frantic medical droids whose logic circuits were looping under the sheer volume of the trauma.
"She used a piece of shattered glass from a broken lily vase," Valeria reported, her face pale. "She timed it between the security sweeps. She didn't just cut, Seraphina. She dug."
I pushed past them and entered the room.
It was a slaughterhouse. Elena was slumped in her velvet chair, her white nightgown soaked crimson. Her arms were draped over the sides, and the floor was covered in a thick, vibrating pool of her blood. It was pulsing, the resonance of her dying heart making the liquid on the floor ripple in rhythmic waves.
