The Sickened Luna's Last Chance novel Chapter 443

443 /528

**The Perfect 443**

Ella’s POV

The salty spray of the ocean kissed my lips, jolting me awake from a deep, unsettling sleep. My eyes flew open, heart racing, only to be greeted by an empty expanse. Just the relentless wind whipping around me and a familiar expanse of green rolling hills, dark clouds swirling ominously in the sky above.

As I looked down, the vast sea unfolded beneath me, a churning mass of despair. The air was thick with the sounds of screams and moans, rising like a haunting chorus, limbs and hands reaching out, twisting in desperation, grasping at nothingness.

This was the sea of souls.

My arms were spread wide, suspended in a moment of frozen terror. My toes dangled precariously over the edge of the cliff, barely clinging to the rocky surface. I could feel the ground beneath me shift slightly, and the thought struck me like a bolt of lightning: one more step, just one more, and I would plummet into that dreadful abyss, lost forever among the tormented souls.

Panic surged through me, and I stumbled backward, gasping for breath until my feet found solid ground once more. With a frantic whirl, I turned around, and there she was—Margaret. She stood before me, an apparition of my past. She looked just as she had the last time I laid eyes on her, still clad in the tattered remnants of her gala gown, stained and torn. But now, her once vibrant face was ghostly pale, her limbs unnaturally thin, and as I stepped closer, I noticed the grotesque holes forming in her cheeks, revealing the jagged edges of her teeth beneath.

She was rotting. Decaying. Even in this place, she was a reflection of her own moral decay.

“No longer wearing my friend’s body, I see,” I managed to say, my voice steady despite the turmoil inside me. I approached her with a newfound confidence, one I hadn’t realized I possessed. “Now I can see you for what you truly are. Weak. Pathetic.”

Margaret’s lips curled into a smile, revealing her rotting teeth in a grotesque display. “I could change myself,” she replied, snapping her fingers. In an instant, she transformed, becoming young and beautiful again, as radiant as she had been on the day my father wed her; the same age I was now.

But then, with another snap, she reverted to her decayed state. “But I thought it would be more fitting to show you how I truly am. To show you the consequences of your actions.”

“I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” I hissed back, my resolve hardening.

“I know you would,” she said, her voice dripping with malice. “Too bad you won’t get the chance.” With a swift gesture toward my chest, I glanced down. The shard of crystal remained embedded there, glowing a faint green through the fabric of my shirt. Blood stained the area around it, but curiously, I felt no pain. Not here. Not in this realm.