What she knew was that she didn’t fear death anymore. She had seen the other side in that Escher trap, and like a child receiving her first flu jab, or emerging intact from the dentist’s office, she understood there was nothing much to fear. Death was just nothing. A twinge of pain, and that was it. And she had it better than any Shades, for she didn’t even have the afterlife to contend with. Only the vanishing of the self, and the end of all obligations.
