COUNTESS ISOLDE VON NACHTS
I arrive at the Rookeries three hours late. Traffic. London's mortal infrastructure is tediously slow.
Nine hundred years of existence teaches patience. But today patience costs lives.
The battlefield is silent when I arrive. Wrong. Battles are never silent. Screaming, gunfire, dying. Always noise.
This silence is magical. Containment. Spell-work.
I see the golden circle. Hermetic magic. Advanced. Powerful. Containing hundreds of fighters.
All frozen. Paralyzed. Aware but immobile.
Trucks are loading them. Mages dragging bodies. Sorting by species. Cataloging like livestock.
My fury is instant. Ancient. Overwhelming.
"STOP." My voice carries. Nine centuries of power behind it. Every being within a mile feels it.
The mages freeze. Not from spell. From fe
