he’d been hanging there . . . oh, dear God . . . seven years. Living. Dying. The cruciform . . . forcing him to live again. Electricity . . . surging through him every second of those . . . those seven years. Flames. Hunger. Pain. Death. But somehow the goddamned . . . cruciform . . . leeching substance from the tree maybe, the air, what was left . . . rebuilding what it could . . . forcing him to live, to feel the pain, over and over and over . . .
