Semua Bab First Bite: Bab 11 - Bab 16

The invitation arrived bound in black silk and sealed with crimson wax, featuring a symbol stamped into it: a crescent moon caught in a serpent’s coils. Autumn's name was elegantly inscribed in silver ink. There was no return address, no sender.Tristan stared at it, as if it might explode.“You’re not going,” he said firmly.Autumn arched an eyebrow. “That’s not your decision to make.”He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nose. “Autumn… this is Jaiden’s seal.”She paused for a moment. “Then I absolutely have to go.”---The masquerade took place in an abandoned cathedral outside Chicago, now restored to haunting opulence. Candles floated mid-air, and crimson velvet draped the walls. A slow, ancient waltz pulsed through the space like a heartbeat.Autumn entered alone.Her mask was silver with veined onyx lace, and her gown—a deep emerald satin—hugged her curves as if it had been tailored for seduction. Beneath her collarbone, her pendant pulsed.Minutes later, Tristan en

The mirror stopped smiling first. Autumn shattered it anyway.The council met at midnight, deep beneath a hollowed-out basilica carved into the earth. Pillars wrapped in ivy framed a long obsidian table. Around it sat the supernatural elite—witches, vampires, spiritwalkers, and those who had survived too many blood moons. Autumn entered last, her pendant glowing. She felt their eyes on her, weighing her, testing the limits of what she had become. Tristan was at her side. Jade and Dominic sat across the chamber, both pale and serious. Jade’s power pulsed in waves, laced with something new—panic barely contained by bone.Autumn spoke first. “I saw Mara.”Whispers erupted. One of the elders, an albino vampire with no eyes, leaned forward. “The Hollow is waking.”“She tried to pull me under,” Autumn said. “She’s inside the veil.”“No,” Jade said softly. “She’s beneath it.”That silenced the room.“What does she want?” asked Dominic.Autumn’s voice barely rose. “Me.”---Later, in the quie

The candlelight flickered incessantly in the meticulously drawn circle that Autumn had outlined with ash and salt, its warm glow casting dancing shadows against the worn walls of her grandmother’s ancient ritual room. Outside, the soft spring wind rustled through the newly budded branches of cherry trees, creating a gentle, melodic sound that felt almost like a whisper. Meanwhile, inside the sanctuary of her past, the Veil waited and listened with an almost sentient presence.Seated cross-legged on an intricately woven mat, Autumn surrounded herself with a collection of ancestral artifacts—delicate bones that spoke of forgotten lives, smooth stones imbued with ancient energy, vibrant feathers from elusive birds, and the softly breathing Book of the Veilwalker, its pages fluttering as if sensing the charged atmosphere. The remnants of the Hollow fire still etched traces on her skin: a faint silver burn that curled around her collarbone like a serpent, and a tattoo-like mark of dark thr