Then…
Silence.
Stillness.
Quinlan collapsed.
No dramatic fall, no war cry, no scream. His body simply shut off, as though something inside had been switched down to zero. His eyes rolled back, and he crumpled like a marionette with cut strings, slamming into the blackened earth.
"QUIN!" Serika's voice was the first to break.
"Lord Quinlan!" Rongtai bellowed, already lunging forward with a monk's impossible agility.
"So damned greedy! Don't you dare die on me like this!" Feng cried, racing down the slope of the crater.
They all converged on him at once, with Serika tenderly propping his head up on her sensual thighs, Rongtai scanning his pulse with qi coiling at his fingertips, and Feng furiously working a diagnostic technique with trembling hands—a diagnostic technique she hadn't even learned yet.
He wasn't bleeding.
He wasn't bruised.
But his soul… his aura… was gone.
Like a black hole had swallowed it, or maybe sealed it within.
