A Shade of Vampire 77 A Fate of Time - Bella Forrest Page 0,61

of myself. I knew now not to question the universe or the entities that animated it, forces older than time itself. They reasoned and did things in their own way. Our minds were simply too small and were unable to comprehend all the variables, the factors that formed the bigger picture. For us, the bigger picture had been, at most, saving a galaxy or an entire dimension from one evil thing or another. For something like the Word, the bigger picture meant something else entirely. Something greater than all of us put together and multiplied by a billion.

Lumi and Nethissis put their glowing hands through the interplanetary spell bubble's incandescent fabric. That was a first. They wouldn't have been able to do that before. Clearly, the Word was working here.

We were but a blip in all of existence, yet this incredibly powerful entity had chosen us to move forward, to push through.

Light erupted from the witches' hands and shot through space until it stopped and flattened into a disc. Everything warped and trembled around it, the fabric torn wide open. Lumi and Nethissis cried out, their hands as white as the disc. Sweat beads dripped down their faces, but they didn't stop. They kept pushing, fueled by the Word itself, until our spell bubble shot through the white disc and the In-Between opened up before us in all its colorful splendor.

"Death is in the In-Between," Seeley said, his breath short.

The interplanetary spell darted across the realms of ethereal creatures and rivers of pink and purple and orange stardust. Lumi and Nethissis pulled their glowing hands back, which they gathered into fists, whispering magic on behalf of the Word.

Something surged through the bubble. The five ghouls that had volunteered began to shine as though liquid light had filled them to the brim. The unconscious ones didn't move, but the fifth growled softly, looking at his own hands. He seemed shocked, but not in pain. Not from where I stood, anyway.

The glow intensified until the ghouls' forms melted, revealing what I could only assume were their Reaper selves, before their descent into madness and endless hunger for the souls of the living.

"They're reverting back to their old selves," Kelara exclaimed.

The fifth, still conscious, looked at me with his galaxy eyes. He smiled, before the light took over again and consumed him and the others from the inside. They dissolved like droplets of pigment in water and seeped into the spell bubble.

Suddenly, we moved faster. Much faster.

Hell, we were well ahead of light and sound and anything else that crossed the universe in mere minutes or years. Everything vanished around us. I held on to Raphael with all my strength. Nothing had changed inside the spell bubble, except my perception. I had a feeling I'd fall apart and disintegrate from the speed, but I was okay. It was merely the shock of experiencing it, of seeing something like this with my own eyes.

Raphael held me close, and we all gazed out into the flickering distance.

The spell bubble hummed, powered by the Word and the five ghouls it had sacrificed, and steered by the tracking spell embedded into the magic.

"Holy crap. I should've seen this coming!" Taeral managed, his eyes bulging.

Ahead, the In-Between's oldest solar system unraveled, with its twenty planets and dozens of small, pearlescent moons, as they all orbited around an ancient, reddish sun. I recognized Yahwen first, then Aledras.

We seemed to be headed toward the latter, and my pulse went on a vicious race through my body, making my limbs tingle with an even mixture of dread, hope, and excitement.

"We're going to Aledras, it seems," the Word said through Lumi and Nethissis. "It's where the ritual is fated to end, after all."

"Rather fitting, if you ask me," the Time Master replied.

Indeed. It was where the ritual's final stage would unfold. The beginning of the end, in a most literal sense. Once the last fae was touched by the Hermessi, the apocalypse would be unleashed, and it would start right there, on Aledras.

We just needed to get there before that happened. Easier said than done, I thought.

A bright flicker enveloped the small planet for a fraction of a second. A pulse spread outward from its core, and we all felt it in the pits of our stomachs. The universe reacting, as the five millionth fae finally came down, somewhere in the In-Between.

The grief was insurmountable, my stomach clenching in agony as I understood what this meant. Five million fae had been affected.