I’m not just a Blood Witch awakened by an Original’s blood.
I’m Sloane-fucking-Hale, the foster kid who survived when the system tried to break her, the nurse who spent years saving lives while pretending the world made sense, the woman who fell in love with a vampire and decided chaos was worth it.
I’m the woman who refuses to let her family die.
And I’m done asking permission.
I surge my power forward, my Bloodfire roaring to life, but I don’t surrender to it. I grab it. Forcing it into shape, bending it to my will even as it tries to consume me from the inside out. Heat sears through my veins, molten iron scorches every nerveending, and screams of protest echo as I channel magic my human form was never designed to contain.
The backlash hits as if I’ve slammed face-first into a wall of screaming force. Not the echo of Crave’s pain carried across our bond, but my own body rebelling, screaming that what I’m doing should not be possible. Heat rips through me from the inside out, every nerve igniting at once. My vision fractures, white-hot at the edges, as if the world is trying to tear itself away from my gaze.
Something burns under my skin, deeper than muscle, deeper than bone. My blood feels too thick, too alive, surging against vessels that weren’t built to carry this kind of power. Pressure crushes inward, grinding through my bones until it feels like my skeleton might splinter just to escape it.
Warm liquid spills down my face, the sharp tang of copper coats my tongue when blood drips from my nose, streaking my lips, chin, and throat.
My hands shake.
My knees threaten to buckle.
But I don’t stop.
I force my weight forward, one foot dragging itself ahead of the other, the ground vibrating beneath me as if it knows what’s coming. Each step is a battle against my own body, against the invisible force trying to fold me in half, trying to make me kneel.
Behind me, the air swells.
Lilith’s presence surges an incoming tide, massive and merciless, pressing against my spine, mind, and soul. Not pushing me forward, but waiting and looming. A vast, patient power poised just behind my shoulders, ready to pour through the second I falter.
I move anyway.
Into the chaos.
Into the kill zone.
Every step closer to Crave feels as if I’m walking deeper into a storm that wants to tear me apart, and I’m daring it to try.
“Foolish girl. Youcannotcontain this! You will burn yourself to nothing!” her voice booms through the air, it vibrates through the particles, making my body hum with the magnitude.
“Watch me,” I growl through gritted teeth.
The battlefield spreads before me in chaos and violence. But Viktor’s army is too many, too coordinated, with Thanatos controlling all beings, their bodies raised in the air, caught mid-motion, and with Crave down, bleeding out, the tide is turning.
Not anymore.
I lift my hands. The Crimson Sight shows me everything at once. Vampires, their corrupted blood moving in patterns I read like sheet music. Twenty witches, their magic glowing in conflicting colors that warp the air around me. A dozen demon-possessed humans, their bodies hijacked by entities that don’t belong in this realm.
My Hemomancy reaches out, not gently, not carefully, but with the absolute authority of someone who’s spent years learning every intimate detail of how blood moves, how hearts beat, how life itself pulses through veins and arteries in patterns as familiar as breathing.
Not as a Blood Witch—but as a human nurse.
‘Stop.’
The word doesn’t leave my lips, but it echoes across the battlefield anyway, carried on waves of power that make the air itself shimmer crimson-gold.
Ten vampires collapse mid-charge, their hearts, organs that shouldn’t even matter to the undead, suddenly frozen. Not stopped.Frozen. Their ancient blood crystallizing in their veins, every cell going rigid as my magic convinces their bodies they’re experiencing cold so profound it would kill a human instantly.
To a vampire, who’s already cold, who’s already dead, it’s worse than death.
It’s paralysis.
