Sage POV
The old crystal in my hand exploded into a thousand pieces.
I jerked backward, purple sparks dancing across my fingers as the shards scattered across my workshop floor. This was the third testing crystal that had shattered when I tried to study Lily’s energy signature. Whatever she’d beco after that rite, it was beyond anything I’d seen in three hundred years of practicing magic.
"Sage?" Lily’s words ca from the examination table, worried. "Did I break sothing again?"
"It’s not your fault," I said quickly, cleaning up the crystal pieces with a wave of my hand. They lted into glittering dust before hitting the ground. "Your energy is just... different now."
Different was putting it lightly. When Lily had arrived at my house this morning, asking to figure out what the Triple Moon sacrifice had done to her, I’d expected to find damaged pack bonds or magical exhaustion. Instead, her aura looked like nothing I’d ever seen - layers upon layers of energy that seed to exist in multiple places at once.
"Can you try the mory stone instead?" Lily asked, sitting up on the wooden table. "Maybe that will work better?"
I paused. mory stones were dangerous, especially when working with unknown magic. But my other testing thods had failed totally. The seeing bowl had turned to ice when she touched it. The truth fires had flickered in colors that didn’t exist. Even my grandmother’s old pendulum had spun so fast it broke its chain.
"mory stones can show things we’re not ready to see," I told her. "Are you sure you want to know what happened during the ritual?"
Lily nodded firmly. "I have to know, Sage. These weird things keep happening around . Yesterday, I was thinking about Caleb, and suddenly I could see him even though he was miles away scouting with his brothers. This morning, I accidentally walked through my bedroom wall."
My blood ran cold. Walking through walls was impossible for werewolves. Even for most witches. But if my suspicions were right about what she’d beco...
"Tell exactly what you rember about the sacrifice," I said, pulling out my most powerful mory stone. It was black as midnight and warm to the touch, carved from volcanic glass by my relative who’d been present at the first Triple Moon ritual centuries ago.
"I rember the pain," Lily said quietly. "Like soone was pulling pieces of my soul away. The Void Walker was pulling at all my ties - to the pack, to Caleb, to everyone I cared about. I knew if I didn’t stop it, everyone would die."
She paused, her eyes distant with mory. "So I grabbed the ritual knife and cut the ties myself. I thought if I made the sacrifice freely instead of having it torn from , maybe I could save everyone."
"And then?" I prompted, holding the mory stone carefully.
"Everything went white. I felt like I was falling through space, through ti, through... I don’t know how to describe it. Like I was everywhere and nowhere at the sa ti." Tears ford in her eyes. "When I woke up, I couldn’t feel the pack anymore. Couldn’t feel Caleb’s love through our mate bond. It was like being totally alone for the first ti in my life."
I put the mory stone gently on her forehead. "This might hurt. The stone will show what really happened during those tis you can’t rember."
The second the stone touched her skin, the world exploded into images.
I saw Lily on the ritual circle, the Void Walker’s darkness wrapping around her like hungry fingers. I watched her grab the silver knife, her face determined even as tears stread down her cheeks. But when she cut her bonds, sothing incredible happened.
Instead of the ties simply breaking, they transford. The silver lines that connected her to everyone she loved didn’t disappear - they stretched across dinsions, reaching into places that shouldn’t exist. I saw her awareness scatter into a dozen different realities, each one showing a different version of what could happen to her pack.
In one world, she watched Caleb die protecting the younger wolves. In another, she saw Aiden swallowed by shadow. In a third, Brock fell protecting the pack boundaries. Reality after reality flashed before her, showing every possible way her sacrifice could fail.
But then sothing amazing happened. Instead of just watching, Lily started reaching across those dinsional barriers. She grabbed the versions of herself from other realities - the one where she’d learned advanced healing magic, the one where she’d found ancient wolf powers, the one where she’d mastered witch abilities she’d never known she possessed.
The mory stone grew burning hot in my hands as I watched her pull all those different versions of herself together into one being. Not just Lily Carter, small-town oga, but Lily Carter from a thousand different worlds where she’d grown stronger, learned more, beco more than anyone thought possible.
When the ritual finished and she opened her eyes, she wasn’t just one person anymore. She was all of them.
I yanked the mory stone away, panting. My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped it.
"What did you see?" Lily asked anxiously. "Sage, what’s wrong? You look terrified."
"You’re not just changed," I whispered. "You’re not even entirely in this world anymore. The sacrifice didn’t break your ties - it expanded them across multiple dinsions. You’re connected to every version of yourself that lives in any possible world."
Lily stared at blankly. "I don’t understand. What does that an?"
Before I could answer, the cottage door burst open. Caleb stumbled in, his eyes wild with fear.
"Lily, thank god you’re here," he gasped. "Sothing’s wrong with Aiden and Brock. They were scouting the northern line when they just... disappeared. Not like they were taken - like they stopped existing. I can’t feel them through the pack bond at all."
My blood turned to ice as I realized what was happening. If Lily was linked to multiple realities, and those realities were starting to bleed into each other...
"Sage," Lily said, her voice strange and faraway. "I can see them. Aiden and Brock. They’re stuck sowhere between worlds, and sothing dark is hunting them."
She stood up from the table, her eyes started to glow with silver light. "I have to go get them. I’m the only one who can travel between worlds now."
"No!" I shouted, but it was too late.
Lily’s body began to fade, becoming invisible like a ghost.
"Tell Caleb I love him," she whispered, her words echoing from multiple dinsions at once. "And if I don’t co back, tell him the pack needs to prepare for war. Sothing is using the dinsional rifts to attack our world, and it’s not going to stop with just two dogs."
She vanished totally, leaving only the scent of wildflowers and magic in the air.
Caleb and I stared at the empty space where she’d been standing, the terrible truth falling over us like a cold blanket.
Lily hadn’t just been changed by the Triple Moon offering.
She’d been ard.
And sowhere in the space between worlds, sothing old and hungry was waiting for her.
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