There was a solace in the pain she hadn’t expected to find. A thousand tiny fires consumed her, dancing along her skin in invisible torment and taking with them– everything. There sound of her mother’s screams, the splintering snaps of her cousin’s legs; she was suddenly, blessedly free of the unending nightmare of the fall of the House of Fire.

And as the stewards of the House of Stars peeled her flesh from her bones, feeding her inch by inch into the rough unfired clay of the oracle jar, she thanked them. Her voice warped and twisted by the shaping magics, she thanked them… until at last even that was stripped away.