Chapter 4
796 Words
Chapter Four
Sage
We moved like shadows through the ruined corridor—no words, no wasted motion. Just the low hum of the earpieces and the sharp focus that came with knowing a wrong step could cost lives.
Ash whispered across the line. “Visuals up. Interior cams just came online—someone powered the grid. You’ve got movement on the second level. One heat signature. Human. Still alive. Weak.”
“Ritual site?” Kade asked.
“Top floor,” Ash said. “Multiple heat sources, but they’re flickering. Whatever’s up there isn’t stable.”
We reached the stairwell. Rusted metal. Runes along the railing, burned-out but still reactive. Old ward traps—designed to bleed magic from anything that touched them.
Draven knelt, muttered something low and sharp. The metal shimmered, then cooled.
“Clear,” he said.
Kade took point. Draven followed. Ash and I took the rear, weapons drawn, spells primed.
As soon as we hit the second floor, the air changed. The kind of thick, wrong energy that tastes like copper and ozone. The hallway ahead pulsed with low, reddish light, and the smell—hot iron, old blood, and singed skin—was unmistakable.
I didn’t need my gift to feel it.
“Target’s close,” Ash said. “Room at the end. Locked.”
Kade signaled. We moved.
Draven reached the door first. There was no handle—just a flat steel plate engraved with a circle of warding symbols and blood-colored runes that pulsed faintly under the surface.
“Blood seal,” Draven muttered. “Live and active.”
“We don’t have time to disarm it,” Kade said. “Voss?”
I didn’t hesitate. I stepped forward, drew one of my blades, and sliced the side of my palm cleanly. The blood hit the ward—and it reacted like it recognized me.
Pain snapped through my arm like a whip. The spell flared, hissed, and then burned out completely.
The door unlocked.
Kade stared at me for half a second. “How—?”
“Later,” I said.
We breached.
The room inside looked like hell made of chalk and bone. A ritual circle dominated the floor—etched into tile with burned ash and soaked through with blood. At the center, a man hung suspended, magic ropes carved into his flesh like veins. His aura was nearly gone. Dull. Flickering.
And surrounding him?
Three figures in dark robes. Faces hidden. Energy rolling off them in waves.
The moment they saw us, the air cracked.
Magic snapped through the space like lightning.
Draven went left, deflecting a curse mid-flight with a shimmer of his gauntlet.
Ash ducked low, slammed a pulse bomb into the corner—blinding blue light and a high-pitched screech that fractured the air.
One of the cloaked figures lunged for me.
Bad move.
I pivoted, blade slicing up, fast and clean—cutting through the ward stitched into their robes. They screamed. It didn’t last.
The second attacker threw a bolt of dark energy. I dropped, rolled, came up behind them, and drove my blade through their spine.
Their body hit the ground before their magic finished releasing. I stepped over it like smoke.
Kade took down the third himself—no hesitation, no mercy. A headshot followed by a burst of magic that incinerated what was left of the body.
The silence that followed was sudden and deafening.
I moved to the man still hanging in the center. His aura pulsed faintly now—like a dying candle trying to hold flame.
I pressed my hand to the runes still carved into his chest.
My sight flashed.
A rush of visions—blood, heat, chants, pain. I grit my teeth and pushed through, found the signature behind the ritual, the face of the one who’d started this.
I saw her.
A woman. Gold rings on every finger. White hair. Red eyes. Watching from above.
“She’s not here,” I said. “The one who started it—she left this behind as a test. Or a message.”
Kade was already pulling the victim down. “He’s alive,” he confirmed. “Get med evac.”
Ash called it in.
I stood slowly. My vision still throbbed. My hands were steady. I didn’t look at the blood on my shirt.
Kade’s eyes locked on mine.
He didn’t say thank you.
Didn’t say good job.
But something had shifted. I saw it in the way his gaze held longer than it should have. In the way Draven gave me a small, silent nod. Even Ash’s usual cocky grin looked more like respect now.
No one had expected me to hold my own.
I hadn’t just held.
I’d led.
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