The city did not sleep after the cathedral burned with light. Word spread quickly through the hidden networks of the paranormal underground: Selene was gone, her collection shattered, her hunters scattered. And at the center of it all was Ezzy — the girl who had stolen the thief.
Ezzy felt the weight of those whispers as she moved through the streets. Every aura she brushed against seemed sharper, more aware. Some recoiled from her, others leaned in with dangerous curiosity. She was no longer invisible.
On the rooftop of an abandoned warehouse, she lit a single candle and set her grandmother's brittle aura maps before her. The lines of ink shimmered faintly, alive with echoes of the past. She traced them with trembling fingers, searching for guidance.
The shard was gone, but its echo remained. Caspian's absence was a hollow ache, a silence that pressed against her ribs. And yet, in that silence, she felt something new — her own power, unfiltered, unclaimed by anyone else.
The maps whispered of balance: light and shadow, hunger and restraint, theft and gift. Ezzy realized she had been given something no thief before her had ever held — the chance to choose what to do with the power she carried.
But choice came with consequence.
As the candle guttered, she felt them gathering. Not Selene's hunters — new ones. Auras flared at the edges of her awareness, drawn by the storm she had unleashed. Some came to test her. Some came to follow. Some came to kill.
Ezzy rose, folding the maps carefully back into her bag. She stood at the edge of the rooftop, the city sprawling beneath her like a living organism, pulsing with light and shadow.
She wasn't Caspian's anchor anymore. She wasn't Selene's prize. She wasn't prey.
She was something else.
The wind carried the faintest echo of Caspian's voice, not as a command, not as hunger, but as memory: Make it count.
Ezzy smiled, sharp and certain. The storm was coming, and she would meet it head-on.
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