The air in Manhattan had grown heavy, thick with an unnatural, electric tension that the human population blindly attributed to a late-summer cold front. Yellow cabs gridlocked under a leaden, purple sky, and the ambient noise of the metropolis felt strangely muffled, as if the city itself were holding its breath. The distant blare of sirens and the rumble of subways seemed to echo through a wall of dense, invisible static. But to Kiara, the shifting atmosphere was far more visceral. It was a suffocating wave of scorched earth, damp river water, and the collective, jagged ferocity of a multiplying enemy. The sheer density of supernatural testosterone and bloodlust was rolling through the city streets like an approaching tidal wave, choking the air.
Inside the pristine, minimalist sanctuar
