Colson

One Hour Before the World Breaks

Amaris POV

*One hour earlier*

I knew I had hours left.

That certainty settled in my bones long before the fear did. It wasn’t panic that greeted me when the realization finally sharpened—it was clarity. Cold. Focused. The kind that only comes when the future has already shown you how little time remains.

This was one truth I had kept to myself for some time.

Not because I lacked allies. I had many—wolves, witches, hybrids, immortals bound by blood and loyalty. They would have come without hesitation. They would have fought. Many would have died believing they were changing fate.

They would not have been.

Revising a future once seen is never without consequence. Fate does not like to be corrected—it resists, retaliates, and adapts. Every spell I cast to peer ahead only confirmed what I already feared.

In most futures, we failed.

In many… most of us did not survive.

So instead of trying to rewrite what I had seen, I prepared the best I could.

Colson is our hope.

My hope.

This world’s hope.

I paused at my desk, fingers resting against the worn wood, allowing myself one quiet breath at the thought of him. Of his sarcasm. His laughter. The way he pretended not to care while carrying the weight of his past on his shoulders.

I just had to hope it would be enough.

I am an immortal witch. A powerful one.

But even I am not the strongest force at play.

There are currents moving beneath this world far older than me, far darker. And as fate would have it, I am the key to a spell capable of reshaping everything—every realm, every boundary, every fragile balance holding us together.

That is why they are coming for me.

Colson, whether he realizes it or not, is the other half of that equation.

He has seen what others haven’t. Walked paths most would never survive. Over many years, he has unknowingly crossed the locations of every item hidden across time to complete that spell. He has stood in the rooms where plans were whispered. Listened from the shadows while evil conspired.

I suspect he has even overheard the design of it all in his past.

The memories are buried—locked away by trauma, blood, and survival—but they are there.

Ezra knew that.

Ezra was dangerous, yes—but worse than that, he was intelligent.

When Colson worked for him long ago, it wasn’t just for his ability to spy or gather information. Ezra didn’t use him simply because he was useful.

He used him because Colson witnessed what was needed with his own eyes.

And now Ezra has crawled back from death.

He is not alone.

Demons.

Vampires.

Witches.

Things that escaped Hell and learned how to hide.

Even now, I cannot fully see what we are up against. Every attempt to clarify the threat fractures the vision further. I have cast spells to explore dozens—hundreds—of possible paths forward.

Each time, the outcome is the same.

Failure.

Loss.

Fire.

So I will do the one thing none of them expect.

The one act that will change the board entirely.

It will leave me weakened. Vulnerable. Unable to fight back when they come for me.

But it will buy time.

Time they cannot easily undo.

I will send Colson back.

Back into the eras he hated most. Back into blood-soaked streets and power-hungry courts and memories he spent year's trying to forget—but precisely where he needs to be.

He will travel through moments chosen not by chance, but by necessity.

He will do so without knowing what he is truly searching for.

I cannot tell him.

Not the spell.

Not the names.

Not the full truth.

The future collapses every time I try.

All I can do is leave him clues.

Fragments.

Breadcrumbs scattered across time.

This magic—this act—will drain me. It is forbidden, ancient, and unforgiving. But it will shield him. When they take me, they will not be able to simply use me.

And they will never find him.

Because the last place they would ever expect Colson to be…

…is the past.

I straightened my workspace, deliberately disordered it, and laid the final sigils beneath the dust where only he would think to look. I prepared the anchor room, bound it outside linear time, and set the failsafes.

Then I sat at my desk and wrote.

Not as a witch.

Not as a seer.

But as his wife.

When I finished, the wards shifted.

I felt them then.

The moment closing in.

I rose calmly, smoothing my dress, steadying my breath.

I had done all I could.

Now it was up to Colson.

And whatever gods still listened to forgive me for what I had set in motion.

I felt her before I saw her.

Not as a presence breaking through wards—because nothing did—but as an absence. A hollowing of the magic around me, like the world had briefly forgotten how to breathe.

That was when I knew.

I had minutes at most.

The wards didn’t scream. They didn’t even whisper. They simply… failed. Not shattered. Not dismantled.

Stepped around.

That alone told me who it had to be.

I turned from my desk slowly, pulse steady despite the sudden weight pressing down on my chest.

“You always hated entrances,” I said calmly.

The shadows in the corner of the room shifted—not dramatically, not violently—but with familiarity. A woman stepped forward as if she’d been there all along.

She looked the same.

That was the cruelest part.

The same pale hair, the same elegant posture, the same face I once trusted beside me in candlelit circles and ancient libraries. Only her eyes were different now—blackened, endless, reflecting nothing.

“Still narrating your own demise, Amaris?” she said softly. “You always did like the sound of your voice.”

My fingers twitched at my side.

“Lyssara,” I said.

Once, she had been my friend.

Long before kingdoms fell and hells were breached, Lyssara had been brilliant—curious, fierce, unafraid to ask questions no one else dared. She had wanted more. More power. More understanding. More control.

And when the world told her no, she listened.

Then she chose otherwise.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said evenly.

She smiled.

“That stopped being true the moment Ezra clawed his way free.”

My wards should have reacted.

They didn’t.

I reached for my magic—

—and felt nothing.

No surge. No spark.

Just a dead, hollow space where power should have answered.

Lyssara was already in front of me.

I didn’t see her move.

One moment she stood across the room, the next her hand was at my throat—not squeezing, just resting there with terrifying certainty.

“Don’t,” she murmured, leaning close. “If you try to fight me now, I’ll break you. And I’d rather not damage what we need.”

Cold flooded my veins.

“You allowed yourself to become this,” I said quietly. “A Dark One. An immortal rotting from the inside.”

She laughed softly. “I evolved. Hell didn’t break me, Amaris. It perfected me.”

I felt the truth of it.

She had been locked away for centuries, bound in Hell itself—sealed by covens who feared what she might become.

And now she was free.

“You can’t use me,” I said. “I’ve already taken precautions.”

Her eyes flickered—just for a fraction of a second.

So she felt it.

Good.

“Oh, I know,” Lyssara said. “You always were annoyingly thorough. Whatever spell you cast? Whatever you set in motion? It’s already draining you.”

Her fingers tightened slightly—not enough to hurt, just enough to remind me how fast she could.

“But that doesn’t mean you’re useless,” she continued. “It just means we’ll have to be patient.”

I tried again—pure instinct—to trigger the alarms.

Nothing.

Not a ripple.

“How?” I whispered.

She tilted her head, studying me with something almost like affection. “You taught me once that the strongest magic doesn’t break rules. It steps between them.”

Then the world folded.

No flash. No portal. No sound.

One moment I stood in my study, the scent of herbs still lingering in the air.

The next—

Darkness.

Pressure wrapped around me like a cocoon, magic binding my limbs, my voice, my very breath. I couldn’t scream. Couldn’t fight. Couldn’t even think fast enough to stop it.

The palace never knew.

No alarm sounded.

No ward flared.

No one felt me leave.

Lyssara’s voice was the last thing I heard before everything went black.

“Goodbye, old friend,” she whispered. “Don’t worry. You won’t be alone for long.”

And then—

Nothing.