Chapter 70: The Cruciatus Curse and the Killing Curse
Regulus watched quietly, then flicked his wand again. The werewolf suddenly found it could breathe.
It gulped air greedily — lungs expanding, oxygen flooding the bloodstream, the dizziness receding.
It lay face-down, gasping like a drowning man hauled from the water, each inhale driven to its absolute limit, each exhale trembling with the aftershock of survival.
But the werewolf didn't notice: the air it was drawing in, after completing gas exchange — after the carbon dioxide was expelled — left behind residual waste in the alveoli that had begun to change.
The material was transitioning from gas to solid, from formless to physical.
Into tiny crystalline particles — edges sharp, hardness approaching quartz. Essentially the same debris from the ground moments earlier, only finer, with keener edges.
The first wave of stabbing pain arrived on the tenth breath.
The werewolf coughed violently, trying to expel the foreign bodies, but the crystals had already embedded in the alveolar walls. Every cough drove them deeper.
It felt as though its lungs had been packed with crushed glass — every breath accompanied by a tearing agony.