The city had gone silent, like the breath before a scream.
Levi stood before the flickering breach beneath the ruin—its swirling energy sucking in warmth, sound, reason. The grimoire pulsed at her side like a second heartbeat. Behind her, the air shifted… and Rue stumbled through the smoke, bloodied and half-broken from his torture, but very much alive.
"Rue," Levi whispered, instinctively running to him.
He collapsed to one knee. His shirt was torn, revealing deep lash marks across his chest—and something else. A sigil, spiraled like an eclipse, carved into his skin by infernal fire. The same mark on her wrist… only now, it was glowing. Responding.
Their eyes met—and then the world changed.
In a breathless flash, she heard him.
Not words at first. Emotions.
Regret. Pain. Rage. And then—her name, not spoken, but echoed in his soul.
"Levi… I told them I wouldn't hurt you. They think they own me. They're wrong."
Levi staggered back, her heart racing. "I heard you. In my head."
Rue looked up slowly, his eyes dark with something ancient and afraid. "They forged this seal into me. Long ago. It links me to the one I… once swore to protect."
"Eloria," Levi guessed.
Rue hesitated, but shook his head. "No. You."
The grimoire pulsed again—gold light flickering between them. A tether formed, spectral and burning, stretching from the spiral mark on his chest to the sigil on her palm. For a moment, they both saw flashes of each other's memories:
—Rue as a boy, thrown into the infernal courts, kneeling before a faceless king.—Levi as a child, staring into a mirror that rippled like water, whispering at something only she could see.—Rue, refusing to kill a witch in Salem, even as chains burned into his back.—Levi, just days ago, crying alone in a dorm room as fire bloomed in her hand.
The visions vanished. Both of them gasped.
"I—what does this mean?" Levi asked.
Rue's voice trembled, uncharacteristically soft. "We're soul-bound now. The seal… it's the Spiral of Vexura. Ancient magic. It ties my life to yours."
Levi touched her mark. "Then when I felt you—screaming, bleeding…"
Rue nodded grimly. "You felt my suffering."
The grimoire snapped shut. The breach behind them crackled—then suddenly surged with power.
"We need to close that gate," Levi said.
Rue rose shakily, his sigil fading but still warm. "We will. But know this—if you fall, I fall with you."
Levi looked at him, heart pounding not with fear but with a strange, searing clarity.
"Then let's make sure neither of us does."
The library's archives had grown colder over the last hour. Not because of the season, but because Prairie Smith had opened something she hadn't meant to.
She sat cross-legged on the floor beneath the stained-glass skylight, dozens of old books and parchment pages spread around her. A single page lay in her lap—parchment stiff with age, ink faded to a rust-colored whisper. The name Eloria was written in blood, not ink.
And Prairie had seen her. Again.
Another vision, another dream—but this time, it had happened while she was wide awake.
Eloria had stood in a field of ash. Moonlight poured over her hair like silver fire, and she had stared at Prairie with eyes that mirrored Levi's. Not in color, but in sorrow. In strength. In the terrible burden of knowing you were born for something dangerous.
"You are her voice," Eloria had whispered in the dream. "You must remember what she forgets."
Prairie jolted back to the present, heart thudding. It had felt so real. And this wasn't the first time. Not by a long shot.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor—hurried, urgent. She recognized them before the figure even emerged.
"Levi?" she called out.
But it wasn't Levi who entered—it was Scout, expression hard and wary. "We need to talk," he said. "Rue's seal activated. She can hear him now."
Prairie stood. "She's bound to him?"
Scout nodded. "Soul-sealed. Spiral of Vexura. That's serious shit, Prairie."
She bit her lip, hesitating. Then decided to say it. "I've been seeing Eloria."
Scout paused. "Dreams?"
"No," she said. "Visions. While I'm awake. I saw her when I touched this." She held up the blood-signed parchment. "She talks to me, Scout. Not like a ghost, more like… a shadow living inside a memory."
He crossed the room, frowning. "Why you?"
"I don't know," she said. "But I think—I feel like I'm connected to her. Not by blood. Something deeper. Something fate-bound. Like I'm supposed to help Levi remember something."
Scout studied her quietly. "You're not magical, Prairie."
"I know," she replied, voice trembling. "But Eloria doesn't seem to care."
They stood in silence.
Then Prairie stepped closer, clutching the parchment. "I think she left messages. Warnings. Clues only someone like me could see."
"Why?"
"Because Levi's walking straight into the fire she died in."
The silence that followed was heavy. Scout looked at her, truly looked at her—not as the human tagalong, but as someone who was now part of this.
"If you're tied to Eloria," he said slowly, "then the Council will come for you, too."
Prairie nodded. "Then let them. Because whatever she was trying to do back then, I think we have to finish it now."
Somewhere beneath the city, deep in the tunnels woven by long-forgotten magic, Levi Rose stood frozen as the grimoire in her hands hissed with heat and whispering voices.
The Spiral of Vexura, the soul-seal binding her to Rue, burned on the inside of her wrist—its twisting curve pulsing like a heartbeat she didn't know she shared. Rue's thoughts echoed in her mind like half-spoken dreams. Fear. Pain. Loyalty. And something more... something intimate.
Levi couldn't move.
The seal had activated—and now it was pulling. Tethering. Opening something inside her soul she wasn't ready for.
Suddenly, the chamber trembled.
From the darkness, a group of Council Shades materialized. Cloaked in smoke and ritual masks, they moved with precision. Their voices layered and eerie.
"She is not ready. Take her."
One raised a dagger—made of blackened bone, glowing with runes meant to sever magic. Another began chanting in a language Levi had never heard but somehow understood.
Blood invocation. A banishment.
Levi tried to summon fire—but the seal disrupted her focus. Her hands trembled. She screamed Rue's name in her mind—but got only static.
Then came Scout Cromwell.
He burst into the chamber like a storm, fangs bared, eyes glowing crimson. Without hesitation, he lunged between Levi and the Shades, drawing a curved blade from his coat.
One of the Shades hissed, "The vampire is bound to the demon. He is tainted."
"Good," Scout spat—and slashed his palm open with the blade.
The blood that fell wasn't normal.
It shimmered with silver streaks—vampiric essence bound by oath. With a guttural chant, Scout pressed his bleeding hand against the earth, smearing a sigil that flared bright red. A ward. A sacrificial ward.
The entire chamber shook.
A wave of force threw the Shades backward as the ward ignited in a blinding flash.
Levi shielded her eyes.
When she looked again, Scout was on his knees, blood still dripping, breath ragged. The ward had held—but at a cost.
"Scout!" Levi rushed to him.
He smiled weakly, fangs retracting. "You're… harder to protect than Rue warned."
"You didn't have to do that," she whispered, kneeling beside him.
"Yeah, I did," he rasped. "You're the last gate. If they break you—he dies. And maybe… all of us."
His eyes fluttered closed.
Levi grabbed his shoulders, panic flaring. The grimoire pulsed in her hand again, responding to her fear. She looked at the spiraled seal on her wrist. Felt Rue's presence stir.
The war wasn't just coming.
It had already begun.