EPISODE 12: BLOOD AND STARLIGHT ## CHAPTER 1: THE LAST MORNING Nadia Ashworth woke for the last time on a body's terms. November light—pale, thin, the color of watered milk—entered through the east windows and lay across the bed in parallelograms that wavered slightly, the spatial distortions bending the geometry of illumination into shapes that Euclidean optics couldn't quite account for. She watched the light move. She watched it with the focused attention of a woman who understood that this was her last morning of simple seeing—eyes, photons, neural processing, the familiar chain of physical perception that had served her for thirty-four years and would, by this time tomorrow, be one frequency in an orchestra of awareness. She was not afraid. She had been afraid—three nights ago, reading the grimoire, comprehending the cost—and the fear had burned through her like a fever and left behind a clarity that was, she suspected, the emotional equivalent of the threshold state itself: a calm that encompassed both grief and acceptance without being diminished by either. She showered. The hot water was a physical pleasure that she cataloged with the deliberate attention of someone inventorying what she was about to relinquish: the pressure of the spray on her shoulders, the steam rising, the particular satisfaction of warmth penetrating cold muscles. She dressed in...