The high-pitched frequency tone didn't merely vibrate in the air; it targeted Nora's nervous system. The platinum-white network of veins beneath her skin throbbed with a sickening violet light, her knees buckling as she hit the jagged gravel ballast of the railway tracks.
The weight of her own bloodline was being turned into a paralyzing cage by the device on the Imperial train carriage. She couldn't lift her head. She couldn't squeeze her fingers around her grandmother's runic dagger. She could only watch the gravel through a blurred, agonizing haze.
"Amelia... hide..." Nora managed to choke out, the words pooling like copper in her throat.
The five-year-old girl was ripped away from her side, not by an enforcer, but by the sheer, invisible kinetic pull radiating from the woman in the
