We landed on the wreckage of a Demon dreadnought that was bobbing in the swells of the ocean. It was a jagged island of black steel, slick with oil and seawater.
I laid her down on the plating.
Tenebria didn't fight me. She couldn't.
Without the Gift of Gluttony, the massive reserves of energy she had stored—the stolen power of dragons, demons, and gods—had nowhere to sit. Her body, once a vessel of infinite capacity, had shrunk back to its original factory settings.
She wasn't dying of poison. She was dying of atrophy.
Her body, which had been reinforced by magic for ten thousand years, was suddenly just... flesh. It couldn't support the weight of her own history. Her bones felt heavy. Her lungs felt too small to pull in the air she needed.
She curled into a fetal position, shivering violently.
"I'm empty," she whispered, her voice stripped of all the Overlord's resonance. It was thin. Scratchy. "Arthur... I'm empty."
I knelt beside her.
