Ankyra Sound and it's as if my eyes have been replaced with gasoline.

Ephraim had played this scene over in his head time and time again. Sometimes Caiaphas turned her back on him. Sometimes she welcomed him home. Most of the time she outright attacked him and there was nothing he could do about it but stammer apologies that fell on deaf ears. After all, if he could've chosen, he would've returned to his family, but it was much more complicated than that. They would never, ever have trusted him or seen him as an equal, but knowing that did nothing to dissuade Ephraim from wishing he could reconnect.

He had never imagined he would be facing his mother's broken husk from the mouth of the grotto while her mind, once sharp, betrayed her.

Mom? he repeated, swallowing thickly when her sightless eyes roved over him. He didn't need to be close enough to smell the sickness to know insurmountable fear then. If there was any recognition in those silvery eyes, it wasn't apparent to Ephraim. The husk that was Caiaphas began to move toward him, her body uncooperative and her eyes bright with terror, and his breath froze in his lungs. The sound that came from her then was unlike any horror Ephraim had ever known... and he'd seen a few horrifying things in the throes of PTSD. This topped them all.

Run, his brain screamed, but his legs would not move. They were rooted to the grotto's cold floor while the monster that once was Caiaphas crawled toward him. RUN! But Ephraim could not, no more than he could stop the silver tears that gathered in his eyes as he whispered, mom, whathappenedtoyou? Her ever-burning hatred for him would have been infinitely more palatable than witnessing this.