Chapter 68 A Vampire In Salem

Chapter 68 A Vampire In Salem
Brea’s POV
The air in Salem smelled like old crushed herbs, and burnt sky.
The three of us stood at the edge of a massive building that looked like it had been carved straight out of the mountain rocks. Towers stood against the sky.
Streetlamps glowing with green fire illuminated market stalls, where people in heavy woven cloaks openly threw sparkling dust into the air, turning stone into water and back again.
"Watch your step," Elias warned, his eyes darting around. "The ground itself is alive with ancient spellwork."
Before Rayne could even take a single step forward, the stones beneath his boots turned pitch black.
Dark vine-like markings exploded upward from the stone and coiled tightly around his thighs.
Rayne gasped. His skin instantly turned pale as his knees gave out.
"Rayne!" I screamed, lunging forward to grab his arms.
"Don't touch him!" Elias yelled, shoving me back with a hard hand against my shoulder. "If you connect your Anchor energy to him while Salem's wards are burning his blood, you'll feed the spell and drown him in it!"
I pulled my hands back, my shoulders trembling as I watched Rayne choke back a roar of pain. The dark markings were crawling higher and drinking his vampire strength straight out of his veins.
Within seconds, six figures appeared out of the green light around us. They wore long, ash-gray coats lined with silver thread. Their eyes shot out blue light as they combined their powers together for an attack.
"A vampire in Salem." The lead witch spoke as if someone had just disturbed her rest.
She was an older woman with sharp cheekbones and eyes the color of steel. “Well…well… we must get rid of all impurities in Salem. Right guys?”
Elias stepped directly into the path of their magic, throwing his arms wide. "I am Elias Vorn! We can talk this out without a fight."
The lead witch didn't lower her hand, but her cold gaze shifted away from Rayne and landed on me.
"She is the Anchor," Elias said. "And she carries a living fragment of Isadora trapped inside her consciousness."
The crackling blue magic died out. The enforcers exchanged furious glances.
"Isadora?" the lead witch whispered, stepping closer to inspect my face without touching me. "The fragment is awake?"
"It tried to take my body twice today," I admitted, my voice trembling as I kept one eye on Rayne, who was barely holding himself up on one knee.
"The Anchor is no ordinary vessel," the senior witch said, her expression darkening into something grim. "Our oldest scrolls speak of host-souls who carried foreign minds, but Isadora... Isadora is actively fighting her extraction. If her consciousness fuses with your Anchor power, she won't just control you. She will shatter the dimensional barrier."
She turned toward the guards. "Take the human girl to the Consciousness Hall immediately. The vampire stays in the outer perimeter."
"No," Rayne growled through gritted teeth, his claws digging into the stone as he tried to force the vines off his legs. "She doesn't go... anywhere without me."
I stepped between Rayne and the witches. "I'm not leaving him!"
"Listen to me, girl," the senior witch said coldly, pointing her staff at the black vines binding Rayne. "This city was built on the blood of the Vampire Wars. Our wards are designed to purge his species. The longer he stays near the inner districts, the more the magic will drain his core until his heart simply stops. You choose one, leave him in the outer district, or watch him die here."
Rayne looked up at me.
"Go, Brea," Rayne said, reaching into his coat with a trembling hand. He pulled out a small silver ring carved with the Nikolai crest and pressed it into my palm, forcing my fingers to shut over it. "Keep it. Use it to remember who you are if she tries to drown you again."
I swallowed the lump in my throat, clutching the cold metal against my chest. "I'll come back for you. I promise."
"I'll be right here," he whispered, letting the guards escort him back toward the lower gates.
It was the first time we had been torn apart since the battlefield, and my chest felt completely empty as the witches marched me up the stairs toward the inner city.
The Consciousness Hall was a big chamber made of white marble that reflected the green sky above. In the center of the room was a stone block surrounded by seven floating silver mirrors.
"Lie down," the senior witch ordered, her voice echoing off the walls.
I sat on the cold stone, holding Rayne's ring tight in my left fist. Four witches also stepped up to the floating mirrors, placing their palms against the reflective glass.
"Do not fight the glass," the lead witch instructed.
Silverlight shot out from the mirrors, hitting my forehead. I gasped as a cool breeze flooded my brain and unlocked every corner of my mind.
The witches gasped in unison, their eyes widening in horror as they watched the glowing reflections in the mirrors.
Isadora's dark fragment wasn't floating passively in the dark corner of my head anymore. It had grown into thin black threads that were actively wrapping themselves around memories.
I could feel them surrounding the memories of Rayne, the night he bought me, the kiss in the library, his hand holding mine in the rain.
".She is studying which emotions unlock your Anchor's deepest energy."The lead witch said as she observed.
"She's... she's watching my feelings?"
"The Anchor responds to raw emotion," the witch explained. "Love, fear, grief, anger, desperation, those are the keys that turn your magic into a weapon. Isadora is learning how to trigger those emotions inside you so she can use your own power against you."
My blood ran cold. Rayne wasn't just my protector. My love for him was the very thing making my power explode, which meant Isadora was using my connection to him as her primary pathway to consume me.
Before I could process the terror twisting in my stomach, the silver light from the mirrors shone bright.
I was no longer looking through my own eyes. I was standing in an ancient, underground stone chamber buried deep beneath Salem.
Hooded witches surrounded a central altar where a young, pale woman was chained down.
It was Isadora. Hundreds of years ago.
Beneath her bleeding body was a glowing circular symbol drawn on the floor, dripping with dark blue magic.
"The binding is complete!" a voice bellowed in the dark space. "She is anchor-bound!"
The vision snapped shut at that instant.
I sat upright, gasping violently for air, cold sweat soaking my shirt.
"What did you see?" the senior witch demanded, leaning over me with intense eyes.
"An underground room," I wheezed, my chest aching. "A young Isadora chained to an altar... and a huge circular symbol carved into the stone floor."
The senior witch froze. She looked up at the other witches in the room, her face turning completely white.
"The Circle of the First Weave," she whispered, her hands visibly shaking.
Elias, who had been watching from the doorway, stepped forward with disbelieving eyes. "What are you saying?"
"She was brought here," the senior witch said, turning her terrified gaze back toward me. "Salem didn't just study Isadora. Centuries ago... Salem made her."
I looked out the window toward the towering city. We had come to Salem thinking we were running to a sanctuary to save my life.
Instead, we had just walked directly into the graveyard where the monster inside me was born.