Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 105939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Delphine would already be moving toward the source, her feet carrying her through Quarter streets while her mind struggled to understand why.
Books scattered across his desk as he lunged for the Votum Aeternum, the weapon burning against his palm with urgent recognition. The blade knew what was happening—could sense the same chaotic energies that were wreaking havoc with every protective sigil he'd carefully placed throughout the Quarter over decades of patient work. Behind him, his own wards held but strained, their delicate balance disrupted by magical forces too raw and uncontrolled for safe containment.
The streets were a chaos of failing infrastructure as he ran. Ozone and copper hit him two blocks from the river, underscored by something deeper—the acrid scent of reality itself burning at its edges. Street lamps stuttered and died as he passed, their electrical systems overwhelmed by feedback from the breach. Gas lines groaned in their underground housing. Car alarms shrieked in discordant harmony as their electronic systems registered energy signatures they weren't designed to interpret.
Other practitioners were emerging from buildings along his route, some trying to contain the damage, others simply fleeing. Maman Brigitte's silhouette moved frantically on her gallery, hands working rapid patterns to reinforce protections around her block. The air around her property shimmered with defensive energy, but even her considerable power was being tested by the magnitude of the breach. Further down Royal Street, Marcelline directed two younger vampires toward what looked like damage control, their preternatural speed allowing them to reach affected areas before human authorities could arrive and complicate matters with inconvenient questions.
A city bus careened through the intersection ahead of him, its driver slumped over the wheel as the breach's psychic pressure overwhelmed his unprotected mind. Bastien threw himself against a lamppost as the vehicle mounted the sidewalk and crashed through the window of a closed boutique, glass exploding outward in a shower of glittering fragments.
The certainty that Delphine was being drawn toward this epicenter of magical chaos made his ribs ache with desperate urgency. The tether between them was resonating with the breach energy, creating feedback loops that would feel like urgent summons to any soul carrying fragments of past incarnations. She would follow that call without conscious choice, her sleeping memories responding to the magical pressure with the same inevitability as flowers turning toward sunlight.
The ritual site was nightmare made manifest when he finally reached it. The amateur who'd triggered the breach lay unconscious near their makeshift altar, blood still seeping from deep cuts on their palms where they'd tried to grip their shattered chalice. The air above them rippled with cold distortions, and through those temporal fractures Bastien could see glimpses of other times, other places—shadows of the riverbank as it had existed in decades past, complete with figures who'd been dead for generations moving through spaces that no longer existed in present reality.
The breach was pulling energy from across multiple temporal boundaries, using the Mississippi's profound spiritual significance as an anchor point to access memories embedded in the landscape itself. Every tragedy that had ever played out along these banks, every moment of transformation or loss, was bleeding through the damaged Veil like ink through torn paper. The effect was hauntingly beautiful, but also lethal for anyone caught in its influence without proper protection.
Windows in nearby buildings had blown out from the pressure waves. Fragments of glass covered the street like fallen stars, each piece reflecting the ethereal light bleeding through the breach. The air itself seemed to thicken and thin in irregular patterns, making it difficult to breathe consistently. Street signs twisted into impossible angles. Fire hydrants wept streams of water that flowed upward before dissipating into mist.
And at the center of it all, Delphine lay collapsed at the ritual circle's edge.
Her face was peaceful despite the chaos surrounding her, as if she'd simply decided to rest in the middle of a war zone. But when Bastien knelt beside her and checked her pulse, he could feel the tether rupture wave moving through her system like electricity, causing her muscles to spasm involuntarily and her breathing to come in shallow, irregular gasps. Her soul was being pulled in too many directions at once, responding to the breach's call while simultaneously trying to maintain connection to her current physical form.
The scent of smoke—not from any fire burning in the present, but from temporal echoes bleeding through the breach—triggered the memory with violent clarity.
1906. The Saenger Theatre.
Smoke thick enough to choke on filled the backstage corridors as Bastien fought his way through collapsing timber and twisted metal. The ritual had gone catastrophically wrong, and the flames consuming the building weren't natural fire but something far more destructive—spiritual energy that could burn through the connections between souls as easily as it consumed wood and cloth.
“Delia!” Her name tore from his throat as he pushed through debris toward the stage where the ritual's focus burned brightest, silver light pulsing through the smoke like a malevolent heartbeat.