The searing white at the hottest point of the fire converges into a light so bright that it strips away the colors at the edges of Cora’s vision. Just as the darkness of Delilah’s shadow led into an infinite chasm of night, the bright white is another door into a place Cora doesn’t want to go. It is the unknown beyond of the doorway in the crypt; it is the secrets of the sun, the reason they tell children not to stare at it directly; it is the star explosion that will one day destroy everything and everyone. The roaring of flames devouring paper begins to sound like screams, a thousand
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