Chapter 1 PROLOGUE

When the third soul wakes in flesh of three,

And the blood moon bleeds above the bone-white sea,

The sealed shall stir, the buried ones shall hear,

And what was locked in silence shall draw near.

She is the key that turns inside the oldest lock,

The breath that breaks the binding, the hand that stops the clock.

By her becoming, the chained shall feel the call,

And when she is whole, the ancient ones shall rise and the world shall fall.

Olivia remembered it the instant the words The Presence said to her, it surfaced in her mind not as something she had to recall, but as something that had never truly left her.

Olivia stood before the antique mirror, It had been silent for months. Just a mirror. Just her own tired reflection staring back.

But she remembered what it had shown her once.

“She’s a child,” Olivia had said, her hand pressed flat against the cold frame. “Eighteen years old.

The prophecy does not care how old she is.

“I know what it says. I don’t need to hear it recited back to me. I need you to tell me there’s another way.”

There is no other way. There never has been.

She is the third tribrid to walk this earth, The Presence continued. Witch, wolf, vampire infused into a single body. Two came before her, long ago. Both were catastrophes the world barely survived. Neither was killed, a tribrid cannot simply be killed. They were bound. Sealed in the earth. But before the binding took hold, they made a pact between themselves.

They swore that if a third tribrid was ever born, they would use her power to break their seals. And once free, they would not stop until every witch, every wolf, every vampire on this earth was gone. Not rule. Erasure. Chaos left standing where the supernatural world used to be.

Every day she grows into her power, the seals weaken. She does not have to want this. She only has to exist, and become what she already is.

“Then tell me how to stop it.”

There is nothing to stop. You came here hoping I would tell you a door existed that you hadn’t found yet. There isn’t one. The third soul wakes. The blood moon will bleed. The sealed will stir. This was written long before she was born, Olivia. Long before you were.

She is the end of one world, and the beginning of whatever follows it. Whether that world survives her has not yet been decided.

And then it was gone, and the mirror showed her nothing but her own face, pale and unmoving in the dark.

Olivia blinked, and the memory let her go.

She was standing in the same room, in front of the same mirror, months later, and nothing about that night had loosened its grip on her since. If anything, it had only tightened. Every week that passed, every small shift she felt, pulled that memory closer to the surface, until it didn’t feel like something she was remembering anymore. It felt like something she was living through twice.

She had spent months telling herself there was time. That whatever was coming was still far off, still theoretical, still something she could plan for instead of survive. Standing here now, she didn’t believe that anymore. She only worried about Marcella.

Olivia picked up her phone. Set it down. Picked it up again. Finding it hard to decide

There was only one person she trusted with this someone steady enough to hear it without falling apart, someone who wouldn’t ask her to explain everything twice before he understood the weight of it. She was so tired of carrying this alone, and there was a particular kind of exhaustion that came from loving someone you’d spent years keeping at arm’s length, not because she didn’t want him close, but because every part of her had been trying to keep him safe, keep him out of a world that could get him killed without it even meaning to. And needing him anyway, despite all of it.

She knew it was risky but called him anyway.

She dialed. It rang twice.

“Elias.”Her voice barely rose above a whisper. “I need you. Tonight. Don’t ask me how bad it is over the phone.”

There was a pause on the other end, and then his voice, low and careful, the way it always was when he already knew the answer wouldn’t be good. “Liv. What happened?”

“Just come,” she said. “Please.”