로그인Sage.The Void-Salt gas cleared within the hour, Black Crest reinforcements arriving fast enough to drive the Council enforcement units back from the breached wing, but the victory felt hollow standing in the wreckage of what had once been my clinic's east corridor."Casualties?" I asked, voice still hoarse from hours without my Source, without the Twilight, without anything but ordinary hands and ordinary training."Twelve wounded, none fatal," Nessa reported. "We got lucky.""We didn't get lucky. You saved that artery with nothing but pressure and gauze." Dominic's hand found my shoulder, steadying, proud in a way that eased something
Sage.We had less than a day before the Council's deadline, and I spent the first six hours of it in the makeshift lab Strahovsky had set up in the Sanctuary's basement, staring at a dead Rift creature's exposed genetic sequence and trying not to think about the countdown ticking somewhere above our heads."It's not a werewolf," Strahovsky said, adjusting the microscope's focus with steady, unhurried hands despite the chaos unfolding one floor above her. "Not entirely. This creature came through during the last tremor, killed two scouts before it died of what appears to be exposure to our world's atmosphere. Its biology wasn't built to survive here.""Show me the sequence again."
Sage.I didn't remember phasing away from Thorne's claws so much as simply finding myself somewhere else, the world stretched thin around me the way it had during the Bone-Singer attack, every second of the fight arriving a fraction slower than it should have.Thorne recovered fast, faster than his size suggested he should, and turned his cluster of eyes toward Dominic instead, who'd already closed the distance with his sabers drawn."Alpha," Thorne said, voice still layered wrong, almost amused. "I did wonder if you'd bring your blades to this particular fight.""I bring them to every fight," Dominic said, and struck.
Sage.The report came in three days after the Arena, delivered by one of Dominic's contacts with a face gone pale beneath his usual composure."You need to see this," he said, setting a tablet on the desk between us, hands unsteady. "Surveillance footage. Thorne's private compound, the one we've been trying to locate for weeks."I pulled the tablet closer, and the image on screen made my stomach turn, a sterile lab, similar in architecture to the photographs Dominic had shown me weeks ago, except this time the subject on the table wasn't a captured, unwilling victim.It was Thorne himself."He's injecting something," I said, watching the grainy footage with growing dread. "Into his own arm.""Void-Alpha parasite," the contact said grimly. "We intercepted enough of his research to identify the compound before we lost the feed. He's been developing it for months, theoretically, as something to weaponize against Source-wielders like you. We never anticipated he'd test it on himself.""Wh
Sage.The order came down two days after Aurora's departure, delivered by a Council courier who wouldn't meet my eyes when he handed me the summons."Emergency execution order," Nessa read over my shoulder, disbelief cracking her voice. "Twenty-three feral Omegas, scheduled for termination in the Arena. Tomorrow at dawn.""On what grounds.""Public safety. Same language they used for the triplets' hearing." She looked up at me, horror dawning. "Sage, these are patients. Some of them are still under active treatment here."My blood went cold. "How many of th
Sage.The heat started three hours after the bond network collapse, once the terminal had gone quiet and Nessa had finally convinced me to lie down on the workshop cot instead of standing back up.At first I told myself it was fever. Ordinary exhaustion, the kind that came after absorbing three hundred and twelve strangers' worth of grief into a body that had never been built to hold that much.Then my skin started to glow."Sage." Dominic's voice, sharp with alarm, from somewhere near the door. "Your arms."I looked down and understood immediately why he s







