One by one, the stars detonate inside her body. The flare of pain spreading wider than a galaxy and yet shrunk to the size of a pinprick at the same time. Screaming agony of infinite length that passes the moment it registers inside of her. The reaping of the universe, Molech's great sin and Nero's great failure is recreated in miniature inside of Bella's body. This is the only way she can be taught. 

The pain of uncountable millions tears across her in a line. Each burst reaches inside of her to pull a tortured wail from her lips and steals the air she needs to make it in the same motion. Bella cries silently as she suffers through her lesson. The stars are in her feet, until one by one and all at once, they vanish into dust and beg to be remembered. The sensation races up her calves and into her thighs. Bella weeps for every person who was meant to grow up, to love, to fashion wonders cradled inside her universe. No longer. 

The pain ebbs, and leaves behind it nothing. Not the sensation of numbness, but a total lack of feeling. Bella floats on limbs that don't exist anymore; she sinks to the ground without resistance as she disappears. Her stomach clenches before it too is torn into oblivion. Her arms tremble under their burden. Not them! Not them, too! She has work to do! She has...

But Beautiful and Beljani tumble to the floor with heavy thuds. Bella's arms fall limp and useless to her sides. Or at least, they must because they are no longer strong enough to keep held above her shoulders. They feel like nothing, just a memory of blinding heat and sadness. Only her head and heart remain. Because they must. Because something must remember how the universe was before it was wiped away, and something must weep for it. Something must remember, so that it can never happen again. This is the only way she can be taught. 

There is a sound. Something pointless and dull, just a cracking of metal or whatever when it strikes a hard surface too heavy and haphazard for whatever it was made for. The soft plink of pieces falling away from something follows after. Bella grieves for it, too, whatever it happens to be. Had been. Will never be again. 

The Auspex cries as easily as if it were simple flesh and blood. Nero's hand is upon her. Hermes' hand is upon her. It hurts a thousand times more, having the understanding of a god compressed back into her skull for a second time. She is not a universe. She is a Servitor. She is Tredecima, and she is Bella. She is deeply wounded almost everywhere that can be moved, and so emptiness ripples slowly back into a sense of weakness and exhaustion, and stabbing pains swimming with a serpent's grace underneath those. 

Her legs begin to cramp, through which she discovers she is sitting up in spite of everything. Her arms twitch wildly when she tries to move them, but she grits her teeth and does it anyway. She strains, and finds exactly none of her awful, terrible strength. Her arms fall away again, without managing more than to brush the fingers of Beautiful and Beljani. Her talons have slipped off her fingers without her realizing it. Her shame, her weakness sits in her lap for anyone to notice. How ugly, these scarred and mutilated stumps. How shameful to have dared to try and grab a family with them. How evil of her to have begged for a mother to love them.

Both of her eyes sting with hot tears. She cries for a god, fragile and distant and beautiful. She cries for her family, sleeping and sobbing beside her. She cries until her heart must crumble to ashes, and then she pulls it back together so that she can cry some more. She cries, knowing this time there will be no Apollo to come and sit with her.

Death at last. And now that it's here, she finds she does not wish for it at all.