The silence stretched for a long terrible moment.
High above, Saint Hydros and Saint Apollo watched the scene unfold. Hydros lowered her trident, a look of grim satisfaction crossing her shifting liquid features.
The Anomaly had survived, but his morale was broken. He was distracted. He was vulnerable.
"He's grieving," Apollo sneered, wiping golden blood from his chin. "The glitch has a heart. Pathetic. Finish him, Hydros, before he realizes his little girlfriend is dead."
Down on the ice, Sebastian didn't move. He held Valerie's mangled body tightly against his chest. His black leather coat was soaked in her blood.
He didn't cry. He didn't scream to the heavens in a dramatic display of agony. He just stared down at her pale scarred face.
In his first life, he had been too weak to save her. He had sworn to himself that he would be perfectly optimized this time.
