I’m really enjoying this, albeit a little trepidatious about what happened with Xander and Rona… presumably all will be revealed in time…

I'm going to point out something. The emokillsus kills by feeding on memories. The emokillsus is killed by someone going into the cloud of shadow and finding the little core thing inside, and that person receives all the memories that the emokillsus takes from the victim. So, we have a perfect means to have the horrible memories of one person given to another. and then us, the reader. We will know.