A silhouette with the bearing of a queen and the wrath of a god.
Lilith.
Not her face.
Not her features.
Just the silhouette, an ancient, terrifying echo of the First Blood Witch, her presence etched in darkness and shimmering fire. She rises behind me, a guardian carved from myth, her shadowed arms lifting in a posture of protection, possession, and pride.
Magic erupts around us in spiraling orbs of gold, red, and black, each one swirling with its own pulse, orbiting us in widening rings drawn to a new gravitational center. They spin faster, streaking trails of molten light through the air, threads of power weaving between them as if stitching reality back together around our shared roar.
Gold for creation.
Red for blood.
Black for the void she commands.
The orbs burn bright enough to paint the cracked walls in molten hues, bright enough that everyone in the room finally lifts their gaze, not to me, but toher.
Lilith’s silhouette bows its head toward mine, a gesture that is not subservient but acknowledgment.
Her presence wraps around me, a mantle of protection, armor forged from the oldest magic that ever lived. For the first time, the room doesn’t only hear my Voice…
It hearsours.
And everyone freezes.
Conversations die mid-word.
Bodies lock mid-motion.
Supernaturals who fear nothing flinch, prey caught in a predator’s shadow.
The clubhouse, the air, the world, all of it, bends.
To me.
To Lilith.
Tous.
To the Voice that can unmake creation if it chooses.
Rogue halts mid-step. His gold eyes widen as his body seizes, every muscle straining against a command that will not release him. Scorch’s flames drain and die, smoke freezing in mid-curl from his nostrils.
Hex’s fingers hover motionless over his keyboard, his glowing eyes fixed on nothing.
Hades stands as if death itself has claimed him, with white eyes staring unseeing.
I’ve never seen Oracle’s phoenix flames falter before. Not once.Until now.
Even Dread, the one who projects fear itself, is frozen in place, his Divine Power completely suppressed by mine.
And Crave.
Oh God, Crave.
The Original vampire, night-born, terror-forged, old enough to remember the world before light, stands frozen. His shock crashes into me through the tether between us, his immense will battering against my command like waves against stone. But the Voice cages him, unmoving, powerless before a force older than his own creation.
