Unknown POV
The city whispered tonight.
Even beneath the neon glare, beneath the heartbeat of Valeries' endless nightlife, the shadows felt… awake. As if the air itself was waiting for a name it had not spoken in twenty-five years.
I felt it the moment she opened her eyes again.
A pulse through the ley lines.
A crack in the seal.
A flicker of starlight where there should have been none.
The girl had returned.
"How inconvenient," I murmured, though the sound did not quite reach the edges of the chamber.
The room around me glowed faintly, glyphs carved into black stone shifting like embers, reacting to my irritation. The runes pulsed once, twice, as if asking whether I wanted them to burn.
Not yet.
I stepped toward the mirror embedded in the far wall. It was not glass, glass could not hold what it reflected. This surface shimmered like oil and smoke, a dark pool suspended vertically, swirling with visions I could summon with a thought.
Tonight it showed her.
Sarafina Ainsley, breathing again when she should not be.
Her veins glowed faintly beneath her skin. The seal was thinning faster than predicted.
"She should have stayed dead," I whispered.
The glyphs flared at the word dead, as though amused.
I dragged a finger along the mirror's surface. The image rippled, shifting from the girl to something else, someone else.
Hunters kneeling in a half-circle around a hooded figure.
Their captain lowered his head in shame. Their weapons trembling in their hands.
"Your first attempt failed," I said, though I was not speaking to the mirror.
My voice traveled through channels unseen, carved through layers of magic and shadow. Somewhere in the old district above, a hunter stiffened as my whisper slid across his ear. He did not dare respond.
"You let her slip through your blades. You let the prophecy breathe."
A pause. A heartbeat. A promise.
"You will not fail again."
The hunters' pulse quickened. I could hear it from here. I lifted my hand slightly. The mirror obeyed, shifting to show a new vision, another threat.
A man on the rooftops. Dark hair. Eyes like winter fire. A hybrid the clans despised.
He was watching her too.
"Tch." My smile sharpened. "That creature will become a problem."
The runes flared red at the mention of him.
"The hybrid watches over her," I continued. "And worse, he remembers."
Memories were dangerous.
Memory could change destiny.
"But no matter," I whispered, letting the shadows curl around my fingers. "Let him hover. Let him ache for what he cannot protect. He will fail her"
The mirror pulsed, sensing the shift in orders before I spoke them aloud.
"Send the hunters," I commanded softly. "Quietly this time. No mistakes. No hesitation."
A whisper traveled through the corridors, reaching the hunters' captain.
"Retrieve the girl. Before her blood sings."
The mirror darkened, swallowing the last image of Sarafina as though the city itself wished to hide her.
One rune at the top right flickered, an old, broken one.
The mark of betrayal.
The traitor witch who once erased the prophecy's middle lines.
The one who ensured the world believed the girl was ruin incarnate.
She had hidden herself well.
But even she would surface eventually. Everything would.
"Let the starlight return," I murmured, stepping back into the deeper dark. "It only makes the fall more exquisite."
The candles flickered violently, their flames bending toward me in fear.
The last line of the broken prophecy echoed faintly in the chamber, as if the city itself remembered it:
Beware the day her blood sings.
I smiled.
"Because that day," I whispered, "I will be waiting."