Hunted Hybrid Aegis War Saga 1 novel Chapter 232

Chapter 232

Her laugh was like broken glass. It cut through the hollow of my ribs.

“Go for their temples,” she hissed, turning that ruined gaze toward the girl strapped to the table. “Burn their sanctuaries. Desecrate their light. And I… will return.”

And then, just like that, she was gone. The world exhaled and collapsed inward. The flames that had blinked out flared back with a sickly red hunger. The mirror collapsed like a throat closing, melting into nothing.

Lucien shook with the aftershock of it. I was shaking too, but not with fear. No. With something sharper…purpose hardening into a blade. Rage coiled into strategy. We would endure.

“She’s still with us,” I whispered, snatching the comm crystal from the altar and slamming it down onto the stone. My voice was iron.

“CALL THE LOCK. NOW.”

Lucien obeyed without hesitation, his fingers brutal and precise as he called for the vampire heads, the blood witches, and the high priests of our cause. I stood in the center of the ruined temple with blood dripping from my arms like sacramental oil, the smell of iron

thick and holy.

“Begin the harvest,” I commanded.

“If they’re not willing,” Lucien added, his voice flattening into a calm I hadn’t heard from him in years, “the vampires will compel them. No excuses. No delays. We need three hundred hearts beating in her name.”

I tilted my head back and screamed. The sound echoed through the vaulted hall, bouncing off ancient stone and empty altars. “RAELITH MUST RISE. THE BLOOD TEMPLE MUST BE BUILT.”

The blood witches arrived like a flock of dark winged things with their robes flaring, and eyes bright with zeal. They bowed with their knives flashing like stars. I offered the first slice from my palm to the altar myself, no longer elegant, only necessary. The blood fell in hot beads and pooled, and the runes drank, luminous and hungry.

She would rise. They would suffer. And the moon would bleed for what it had done to us.

On that cold stone, with Lucien muttering prayers like a charm against doubt, with the coven’s faces lit by the red glow, I felt something settle into me, no promise of mercy, only the absolute knowledge of a task. We had the plan, the will, and the hunger. The rot that had stolen from me would be returned tenfold.

“She’s still with us,” I repeated softly, not to comfort but to steel. “She is with us in the way the dead linger, unfinished and dangerous. We will finish her work.”

The spells began, slow at first, then weaving faster, binding oaths, pledges of blood, and the names of those we intended to use spoken like litany. The temple filled with a sound that was both hymn and threat. Lucien’s voice rose, steady and cold. The witches chanted. The altars drank.

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19:41

Fri, Dec 12

Chapter 232

1 bowed my head and let the red light wash over me. Pain flated, then dulled. Hate sharpened into devotion. The girl that had once

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