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The doctor paged through her tablet. “We’ve run full-spectrum analysis and toxicology. No known parasites, contaminants, or toxins have been flagged.”

“And Bowman?” Victor cut in. “Does he show similar liquefaction?”

She shook her head. “No. His remains show rapid, advanced desiccation. Mummification.”

I stared at the two bodies, trying to piece together what had happened. Erlik had worn Cassidy like a rotting puppet. Bowman he’d only siphoned. But why the difference? What made Cassidy a vessel and Bowman just a meal?

I needed Jude’s insight. That required privacy.

“Could we get a few minutes with the reports and the body?” I asked, knowing the cameras would still capture everything, but confident I could mask my conversation with Jude as talk to Wade or Victor.

Dr. Ling handed me the tablet, file already open. “Take your time. I’ll be in my office if you need me. Would you like me to open Bowman as well?” She gestured to the neighboring table and its black body bag.

“Please.”

I didn’t know if Jude needed to see the actual remains, but it couldn’t hurt. Dr. Ling unzipped the second bag, gave a nod, and retreated to her office. As described, Bowman’s body was different. Pale, but not gray. No dark staining around the mouth or the Y-incision marring his torso.

Erlik. The shadow god didn’t just kill. He consumed. He’d hollowed Cassidy out from the inside, taken the resonant energy, the life force, and left the biological machinery to collapse in on itself. A used-up battery, corroded at the core.

I tugged on the bond to Jude, hoping we were deep enough across the Veil for a strong connection. A few heartbeats later, he shimmered into view beside me, arms crossed tightly, expression grim.

Without thinking, I reached for him.

My hand passed through his shoulder like mist through smoke. Cold. Empty. Nothing.

I pulled back fast. Hoping no one had noticed.

Jude’s expression didn’t change. But something in his eyes flickered, pain, maybe, or resignation. He’d stopped flinching weeks ago.

I couldn’t stop reaching for him every time I saw him.

He could phase into me, lend me his Weaver’s sight, but the cost to us both was steep, often hours of sleep on my part, banishment to the between-realms on his.

“What do you see?” I asked, directing the question vaguely toward Victor and Wade, but letting my gaze flick to Jude’s location.

“Nothing,” Jude said, his voice a cold whisper in my mind. “No life thread. No weave resonance. No echo of a soul. It’s just... hollow. Whatever they were has been completely erased.”

Only empty shells remained. Proof they had once lived. A testament to what had unmade them.

I focused on Jude, searching for a way to translate what he saw. His hand slipped into mine, a cold shock that bloomed into a shared vision. The room shifted. Layers peeled back, turning my vision to that of my Bastion form without the change, and I saw what Jude saw.

Not threads, as he described them. Instead, a flow.

Ley lines spread out beneath the room like a river system—some wide and bright, others thin and flickering. I could feel them now, the way I’d once felt the shift of my cat form. The Bastion’s sight showed me the whole network at once. The current. The places where energy ran strong and the places where it had gone still. While Jude could focus on the most minute line of energy, calling it a thread, I could only decipher the brightest of currents. And neither of these men were connected at all to any of it.

Cassidy’s body was a dead zone. A black hole in the flow. Whatever energy had once moved through him was gone. Not just stopped, but erased. Bowman’s body was different. Faint. Flickering. Like a river that had been diverted, not dammed.

Wade moved closer, his tall frame a sudden shield between me and the overhead cameras. He touched my shoulder, his voice low. “Your eyes changed.”

In the reflection of a stainless-steel tray, I saw it—my irises swimming with faint, silver stars that spiraled and shifted like alien constellations. The Bastion’s mark. Proof I belonged to something older than the SED, something beyond any mortal chain of command.

The stars faded as I looked away, but the chill in the room remained.

Through the quiet, mental link I shared with Victor, I sent him the echo of what I’d seen, the erasure from the weave. That was the whole reason Zhenjun demanded an end to Erlik. The shadow god wasn’t just killing people. He was unmaking them. Tearing them out of the ley lines so completely that nothing remained. In Jude’s evaluation, with the energy of existence reflecting like a weave of finely woven threads, that meant Erlik punched holes in all of existence until things began to unravel.

Victor nodded and repeated what I’d shown him, phrasing it through his vampire senses as though the loss of blood to the bodies left them more than just empty, but completely unnatural.

Beside me, Jude stiffened. Jealousy spiked through our bond, cold and sharp. I could feel him trying to shove it down. Our mate bond had been too new to settle any disruptions caused by outside forces. I could only hope that once we retrieved his remains and stabilized his corporeal form, we could fix that.