Sixty seconds.
That's all the Infernal Crown needed to rewrite fate.
Larissa's borrowed blade twitched in the elder's spine—a feral thing savoring the kill. The man collapsed, his last scream strangled by tendrils of living shadow. She loomed over him, breath ragged, her silk robes now a second skin of gore. Only her eyes remained untouched—twin shards of cobalt blazing through the crimson mask.
Muffled. That's how time had folded since Vicente's gift first bit into her soul. Each stab, each snapped bone—she'd moved syrup-slow, yet the clock hands blurred. Now reality snapped back with vicious clarity.
Vicente observed from his perch—a throne of writhing obsidian, its armrests coiled with ebony spiders, eternally spinning chains. The cellblock bowed to his influence: iron bars blossomed into thorn vines, ceiling stones wept black sap.
