The silence was the most terrifying part.
A sound so absolute, so profound, it was the antithesis of life.
The world had held its breath and died. I lay on the crumbling rooftop, the shockwave's phantom limb having tossed me like a broken doll. My body was a roadmap of agony, but the pain was a distant, academic thing, a problem for a girl who still had a world to feel pain in.
My world was gone.
The violet beam of the Collector Queen had not vaporised the entire city, but its arc had been precise, surgical in its malice.
It had carved a burning chasm through the northern districts, the heart of Neo-Olympus's downtown core, a wound in the earth that glowed with a sickening, otherworldly light.
A rising, churning monument of fire and dust stood where millions of lives had just been. A million souls, at least.
The heroes, with their escape skills and advanced warnings, had likely survived. They always did.
