Liora didn't know how long she had been reading. Her hands had stopped trembling somewhere along the way, but now her fingertips felt cold. A strange feeling had started to grow in her chest, a tight heaviness that wouldn't go away no matter how deep she breathed.
"Now I hold over fifty."
Fifty souls. Souls of real people. People who once lived and breathed. People who were still conscious inside him, speaking to him through that strange place he called the soul realm.
She gently closed the book and held it against her lap. Her thoughts were spinning faster than she could follow. Her breath was uneven, and her chest felt too tight.
That man… He had struggled just to hold three at first. He had bled. He had screamed. He had lost control again and again. But Liora… she had never experienced that. There was no pain. No backlash. No soul talking back to her.
