TRUTH.
Vasquez’s body lay unconscious in Marcus’s arms, her breathing shallow but steady. The black smoke that had poured from her mouth was now trapped inside Sage’s moonlit ward, writhing against invisible boundaries like a storm caught in glass. It no longer mimicked a human silhouette. It was something purer now—denser. Stripped of its disguise. Rage without flesh.
Torres stood several feet away, his burned arm clutched to his chest. “Is it dead?”
“Contained,” Sage corrected, her voice tight with effort as she maintained the spell. Silver light pulsed faintly around the perimeter of the ward. “Destruction requires a different ritual. What we’ve done is separation and imprisonment. Think of it as spiritual incarceration.”
Sera stepped forward, ignoring the instinctive recoil crawlin
