Chapter Eighteen
SLOANE
The moment the Coven of Crows vanishes from the street, my Crimson Sight activates without conscious thought.
The world doesn’t just change, it inverts.
Colors bleed away, dissolving into something thinner and wrong, replaced by a spectrum that exists beyond normal human perception.
Everything renders itself in shades of blood and shadow, in hues that have no names because mortal eyes were never meant to see them.
And what I see makes every cell in my body scream warnings my conscious mind doesn’t want to acknowledge.
The Originals didn’t leave.
Not really.
They’re still here, woven into the fabric of reality itself, a dark thread through cloth.
I can see them as absence, as voids where existence should be, as tears in the tapestry of the world that pulse with something older than time.
They’re watching from dimensions my human brain can’t quite process, but my Blood Witch senses understand with terrifying clarity.
Five cosmic wounds in reality.
Five entities so powerful that they don’t exist in the world so much as the world exists around them.
They’re observing.
Waiting.
Ready to judge.
My breath catches as I track their presence through layers of perception I didn’t possess two days ago.
Nyx hovers, a living darkness, her consciousness spread through every shadow within a five-mile radius.
Thanatos hangs at the edge of death itself, his attention fixed on the boundary between life and whatever comes after.
Erebus exists as pure void, a hole in the universe that watches without eyes.
Moros sees us from every possible future simultaneously, his gaze fracturing across timelines like light through a prism. And Khaos—
God, Khaos.
The First is everywhere and nowhere.
His presence saturates reality so completely that trying to focus on him makes my eyes water and my head pound. He’s not watching us from outside. He is outside, inside, and between, existing in a state that makes my newly awakened magic recoil in something that feels uncomfortably like worship.
“Sloane?” Oracle’s voice cuts through my vision like a blade through silk, and I gasp, blinking rapidly.
The world snaps back to normal colors. Well, as normal as my enhanced senses allow.
The clubhouse materializes around me in sharp relief with cracked walls, broken windows, and bloodstains that tell stories of recent violence.
But overlaying it all, I still feel them.
The Coven. Their attention is pressing down like atmospheric pressure before a storm.
“Your eyes are glowing,” Oracle continues, moving closer. His phoenix flames cast dancing shadows across his concerned face. “Brighter than I’ve ever seen. What do you see?”
“They’re still watching,” I whisper, my voice hoarse.
I move toward the window where I see Crave being helped inside by Rogue and Scorch.
Even from here, through two walls and thirty feet of distance, I feel how diminished he is through our bond.
The Binding carved his true power, stripping it down piece by piece, leaving him vulnerable in ways that make my Bloodfire surge with protective fury so intense it physically hurts.
“They never left. They’re just… outside normal perception, watching us from dimensions I don’t have words for. ”
My hands glow, pulsing beneath my skin in rhythm with my racing heartbeat. The power wants to surge forward, wants to reach through those dimensional barriers and burn the entities threatening mine and Crave’s existence.
No. I force it down, breathing through the rage. Control. I need control.
“Of course they are,” Hades mutters from his position near the bar.
The necromancer’s usual calm is cracked, stress bleeding through the damage he can no longer contain.
His white eyes are dim, clouded, struggling to maintain their connection to the dead.
“The Coven of Crows doesn’t trust anyone, especially not a Blood Witch they’ve deemed potentially dangerous.
” He looks at me, and I see genuine fear there.
“They’re probably reading every thought in your head right now.
Every spike of emotion. Every flicker of power. ”
The thought makes my skin crawl. “Can they—”
“Yes,” he interrupts. “They can, especially Moros. He’s watching you across seventeen thousand different timelines, seeing every choice you might make, every path you might walk.
And Nyx…” He glances at the shadows in the corners of the room, which suddenly seem deeper, more alive than they should be.
“She’s in those shadows right now, listening, observing, and judging. ”
Eden appears at my side so suddenly that I jump.
Her banshee senses must be going haywire because she’s vibrating with nervous energy, her goth makeup unable to hide the fear in her purple eyes.
She’s humming under her breath, not her death scream, but something quieter, more personal.
A lullaby, maybe, or a prayer to whatever gods Banshees pray to.
“I feel them too,” she says softly, her voice carrying a melodic quality that makes reality shiver.
“Like pressure behind my eyes or death standing just outside the door, waiting to be invited in. Except…” she trails off, her humming growing more agitated.
“Except it’s not one death. It’s thousands, millions, every death that’s ever happened and will ever happen, all compressed into five points of absolute ending. ”
“Jesus Christ,” I breathe out.
“He won’t help you here,” Seraphine says, materializing from the direction of the stage.
Her siren’s voice carries harmonics that make my body ache, each word layered with music I can almost but not quite hear.
Her song has been discordant since the Coven manifested, as though their presence disrupts all natural harmony, all the beautiful patterns she normally weaves through sound.
“The Divine doesn’t interfere with the Originals.
They’re older than gods. Older than most of what we call sacred. ”
She moves to stand with us at the window, and I see her hands trembling slightly. Seraphine, who once sang a man into a coma for touching her without permission, is afraid.
“If you lose control tomorrow, Sloane…” she continues, and her voice drops to something barely above a whisper, “… they’ll tear through this building as if it’s made of paper.
They won’t only kill us, they’ll erase us.
Unmake us. Erebus will turn us into voids where people used to be, and the world will forget we ever existed. ”
“I’m not going to lose control!” The declaration tears out of me, carrying weight far beyond sound.
The air shudders, rippling outward as reality itself flexes to accommodate the command woven through my voice.
Power bleeds into every syllable, warping the space around us, making the lights flicker and the floor hum beneath my feet.
I register, distantly, that the words came out sharper than I meant them to, but there’s no mistaking what slipped through.
The Voice of Lilith gleams beneath my own, ancient and undeniable, and the room reacts instantly—bodies tense, breath catches, and even the bravest among them flinch, instinct bowing to a force that remembers a time before restraint existed at all.
I force it back down, breathing through the power that wants to surge forward and make them believe me. “Sorry. I’m still learning to—”
“Don’t apologize,” Reyna interrupts, moving closer with a warrior’s grace that turns even casual movement into a fighting stance.
The Valkyrie’s storm core is sparking erratically, gold and silver energy crackling around her clenched fists, lightning seeking ground.
Divine Power recognizing Divine Power, responding to the Coven’s overwhelming presence.
“You’re scared. We all are. But fear is useful if you channel it right.
Use it to focus. Use it to remember why you’re fighting. ”
She reaches out, and her hand closes around my wrist. The moment our skin connects, her storm energy flows into me, not aggressive but grounding as though she’s literally anchoring me to the earth, to reality, to the present moment.
“In battle…” she says, her Valkyrie training bleeding through every word, “… fear is information. It tells you what matters. What you’re willing to die for.
What you’re willing to kill for. Right now, you’re afraid of failing him.
” She nods toward Crave, who is outside.
“Good. Let that fear sharpen you. Let it remind you what you’re protecting. ”
I nod, grateful for her steadiness even as my entire world feels as if it’s tilting on its axis.
Through the windows, I watch Crave cross the threshold into the clubhouse, and the moment he enters the building, the Heart Bind flares between us, tightening gently, a reminder that no matter the space between us, we are joined.
Oh God.
His weakness crashes into me, far heavier than I expected.
The Binding didn’t simply lessen his power, it excised it.
Where his Original strength once existed, there’s now a void, a raw, hollow absence that throbs a phantom pain like a severed limb, an ache that shouldn’t exist and yet screams that something vital is missing.
The space where he once carried centuries of dominance is empty.
Exposed.
He’s vulnerable.
Killable.
For the first time in millennia, Draven, ‘Crave,’ is mortal enough to die.
And it’s all my fault.
The realization slams into my chest. He wouldn’t be Bound if he hadn’t saved me. He wouldn’t be facing execution at dawn if he hadn’t given me his blood. He wouldn’t be diminished and vulnerable if he hadn’t chosen me over his own survival.
Terror bleeds through despite his centuries of discipline, raw and unguarded beneath the iron control he’s spent a lifetime perfecting, and the truth lands with devastating clarity.