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The choice happened before thought could catch it.
I lunged.
Every ounce of restoration magic I had—I threw it forward. My fingers searched the void for their strands, grasping at threads that were already dissolving. I caught one, the pregnant woman’s, and pulled. Tried to weave the golden filaments back together.
August’s corrupted force tore through me like a riptide.
My nose started bleeding. I didn’t stop.
I caught another thread—the grandmother’s, white-haired and dignified—and held it. Tried to anchor it while the unraveling kept tearing. My vision shimmered, went double, but I kept pulling. If I could just save one. If I could just—
The threads slipped through my magic like water through fingers. Dissolving faster than I could restore. I was trying to restore what was dissolving faster than I could reach it.
The woman in the center—the one with children named Thomas and Mary—screamed.
“My babies . . . ” Her voice cracked. “Tell them—“
She dissolved. One moment a woman with children waiting at home, the next—empty air. A space where a person had been.
They all did.
One by one. The pregnant woman clutching her belly. The young woman with the defiant gaze. The grandmother. The one still gripping her skirts.
Five people. Gone.
Just empty spaces where they’d been kneeling.
No.
My legs buckled. I caught myself on the back of a seat, blood dripping from my nose onto the velvet cushion. I’d burned through everything—all my restoration magic, all my strength—trying to save people who’d been doomed the moment Elias overpowered the suppression.
And it hadn’t been enough.
Around me, the crowd kept fleeing. Shoving toward exits, trampling over each other, too focused on their own survival to notice what had just happened on stage. They’d come to witness a demonstration. Panic had made them blind to the very horror they’d paid to see.
On stage, Elias turned toward the fleeing audience. His hand tightened on August’s shoulder.
“Now,” he said, “sweep the—“
An explosion ripped through backstage.
Louder than it should have been. The fire had found something—oil storage, paint, something that shouldn’t have been there.
The blast tore outward, shattering the wings. Flaming debris scattered across the stage. Elias stumbled, his concentration broken, his command left unfinished. The massive velvet curtains caught immediately. The wooden stage began to burn.
Smoke poured into the hall in choking black waves.
Adeline.
She’d gone backstage during the chaos. Had been back there when—
Through the smoke and flames, she stumbled out from the wings. Her dress was burning. She beat at it with her hands—her bare hands—and made it three steps before collapsing.
But the stampede made reaching her impossible. The crowd pushed me backward, away from the stage, away from everything.
In the front row, Beatrice swayed.
Mira caught her before she collapsed completely, supporting her weight. Beatrice's face had gone grey, her legs barely holding her, drained entirely by the suppression
