~Annalyn POV~
I counted every single one. That was the thing I had not been able to stop doing since I reclaimed my hearing, since the internal partition cracked open and the full experience of occupying my own body came back to me in pieces. I could not stop the entity from making its decisions. I could not redirect the body fast enough to change the outcomes.
But I was aware of every choice, every strike, every person the entity processed as an obstacle and addressed accordingly, and my awareness put a name-shaped weight on each one even when I did not know their actual names.
The Black Wolf stronghold was the last organized resistance of any real size, and the entity had been moving toward it for two hours with the specific direction of something that had identified a destination and would not be rerouted.
