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Fortunately, Enchanter Diaz appeared more than capable of handling himself against The Sisters Three with Priscilla and nearly fifty Global Guild witches at his side. Because the instant the protective symbols lining every inch of the MDC failed, I barreled inside, drawn to Milo’s mind.

The Metropolitan Detainment Center was a maze of highly secured corridors, layers upon layers of warded checkpoints to prevent infiltration or escape. I understood the layout entirely from the Doppler’s time spent here. There were two huge buildings that separated the men’s and women’s facilities. In fact, the two buildings only connected in three places: the central checkpoint by the parking lot, the correctional officer’s locker station, and the underground solitary confinement cells.

I followed the trail of unconscious correctional officers, beaten and bruised but breathing despite the carnage everywhere. Broken enchantments, stray magic, rubble from the crumbling building. In a matter of seconds, every single inmate inside the MDC had been released, and within minutes, the entire facility had transformed into a battlefield.

While the MDC was divided into multiple cell blocks, keeping over two thousand inmates from both facilities separated as a way to prevent rioting or revolts, those blockades were little more than concrete walls, which no longer proved effective since every defensive enchantment and dampening ward had been deactivated. Holes had been blasted through the two buildings, throughout every cellblock. Inmates from the men’s and women’s facilities coordinated their chaos, ganging up on correctional officers in an effort to escape.

My magic, my curiosity, my concern all reeled me through the long, white corridors of the facility, drawing me closer to Milo, and ignoring the chaotic minds that rioted. Not that it did them any good. As fast as I moved, the blur of my psychic energy darting through this place, paled in comparison to the sheer indomitable force of Gladiatrix who whipped from one end of a room to the other, leaving a trail of fallen foes in her wake.

She shifted between guards and inmates, blocking conflict and separating them. She caught magical strikes mid-propulsion. Literally held magic aimed at destroying something or someone between her hands before smothering it with telekinesis. She prevented battles before the idea was even fully formed.

Each movement held this majestic calculation where Gladiatrix took the entire Metropolitan Detainment Center into account, dividing foes, dropping threats, and protecting the unaware whether they were employed or an inmate. The magnetic pull of Milo’s mind simmered as I lingered close to Gladiatrix, watching her unravel Enchanter Evergreen’s plan with perfect precision. I had faith in Milo, but goddamn, I had no idea Gladiatrix really could unleash such tremendous strength without breaking a sweat.

One punch shattered steel barriers. A single kick from across the room rippled with the force of a gust to knock down an entire gang. The simple act of squeezing a shoulder with her index finger and thumb dropped men three times her size to their knees. A clap of her hands created a cacophony of echoes to distract crowds. Every step, every movement, every technique used held a purpose.

Her enhanced senses allowed her to hear battles across the MDC, her eyes scanned every room she darted between, her skin radiated with telekinesis sensing the slightest vibration of danger. Gladiatrix worked as an army of one, squashing the riot before a single inmate reached the exits.

All the same, she had a sense of urgency sitting as a heavy pit in her stomach, it churned with the anxiety in her gut. “ Too much time. I need to move faster. ”

Milo’s plan required her to drop the number of inmates by half if she hoped her reinforcements stood a chance at stopping this jailbreak in its tracks without a single escape or fatality.

She needed reinforcements? Doubtful.

Someone in a black cloak leapt from out of nowhere. The slight creak in their bones was the only indication Gladiatrix sensed before a sickle’s blade swiped past her face.

Crimson washed over everything, filling my sight with a bloodthirsty aura of the witch that attempted to hack through Gladiatrix. She’d spun around, cape whirling, barely escaping the blow, then countered the blade with a backhanded swing containing a powerful blast of telekinesis. The impact knocked the cloaked witch several paces away.

“You’re one of the pillars in the Celestial Coven,” Gladiatrix said.

“They call me Grim.” He swung his sickle, hacking and slashing at Gladiatrix in a continuous motion like the weapon was an extension of his arms.

“ I need to keep him here. ” Gladiatrix easily evaded Grim’s careless strikes but had to shove others out of the direct line of the sickle’s blade. “ I should’ve apprehended more of the inmates. This room should’ve been cleared before he stepped inside. ”

Gritting her teeth, Gladiatrix weaved back and forth, dodging the weapon while telekinetically removing the injured, the unaware, and those still fighting for the sake of violence.

With her focus split onto both goals, Grim took that singular opportunity to lunge forward with his sickle raised. The slice moved so quickly that even Gladiatrix barely evaded, losing a few strands of her hair as she bobbed out of the blade’s slash.

Composing herself, Gladiatrix reeled back a fist empowered by her branch and enough telekinesis to level this entire building and struck Grim directly dead center in his chest. I gasped the nonexistent air from my lungs, suspecting the impact had a similar effect on the broken witch that’d come to kill Gladiatrix.

A collection of crackles and breaks popped in the air, signifying the many bones a single concentrated strike had shattered. The sound traveled throughout Grim’s body like the webbed cracks of an icy lake before everything collapsed.

Grim flew back, hurled into a wall where the crash led to more breaks. Not the wall, though. No. Gladiatrix used telekinesis to soften the impact against the building and redirected the propulsion of magic. The ricochet of strikes barreled into Grim with waves of honed telekinesis, not unlike a tsunami destroying a city. He lay on the ground with his cloak wide open and body snapped apart into crumbling pieces.

I shuddered at the sight of his body made of bones scattered about the floor. No skin. No blood. Nothing but bones and a few foul organs tied together with twine and attached to the spine. They dangled like hooked meat in a butcher’s shop. He appeared to be the most perverse iteration of a grim reaper, the organs dried and losing their color, oozing pus, and leaking magic from his insides.

“Well, that’s not very nice.” The skull rattled, jaw moving up and down like a talking puppet. Piercing, bloodshot eyes fixated on Gladiatrix. The way they floated in the empty sockets of Grim’s skull sent a sickening nausea through me. His bones wriggled and trembled on the floor. It created an eerie tippity tappity of clicks and clinks, followed by a horrifying bellow of laughter that came from the head. “I heard you were tough. How fun.”

Cracks, splinters, and breaks mended together. The skull floated at height level as the bones pieced in proper order. He extended a bony hand, staring at the missing index and middle finger. I suspected he’d lost them to the white dust on the floor created from the single hit Gladiatrix had landed.

“ If I had to wager, I’d say this is the one Enchanter Evergreen predicts will target The True Witch’s staff, ” Gladiatrix thought through all the variables of Milo’s plan.

The other members of the Celestial Coven remained veiled from visions, but he’d seen three other pillars of support connected to The True Witch, Amara. The Sisters Three, the divine psychics. Now this Grim, a witch made of bone and rotten insides.

Milo had an idea of their motives, how the puzzle pieces of their goals, their agendas, their roles, fit to create the picture of today’s future. A future Enchanter Evergreen planned to prevent.

Grim drew his discarded sickle into his grasp with a telekinetic pulse as he draped the black cloak over his skeleton form again.

This was his form, too. Something about his magic, I’d never seen a branch like it before, but he wasn’t like The Sisters Three. They wedged their minds into the body of an unwilling host; I could taste it pulsating in vile waves. But Grim…his consciousness fluctuated throughout the entirety of this bizarre skeletal system like his very being had seeped into every bone, his thoughts woven into the desiccating organs stitched to the shambled body.

Grim released a giddy giggle, his teeth chattering. “I can’t wait to pick apart your bones. Save the best for my altar.”

“Bring it on, you sick fuck.” Gladiatrix dug a heel into the floor, cracking the ground beneath her before taking a calming breath. “ Stay in control. ”

If she wanted, Gladiatrix could level this entire building, the entire street, with an overzealous stomp of her foot. But that wouldn’t resolve this problem; it’d merely injure everyone nearby.

Grim lunged toward Gladiatrix. As their thoughts collided, each with opposing goals, each studying their surroundings, each with a respect for the daunting power the other possessed, I drifted further back. Not drifted. I was pulled away.

Milo. He drew me closer. The same sense of panic throughout the MDC hadn’t gripped his heart and seized him. In fact, he zipped through the facility, taking out the occasional threat with carefree admiration for all the allies who’d helped make this possible. The devastation. The destruction. The discord. None of it concerned him because Milo flew down a path following the strands of possibility that shined the brightest, seeing and believing the best outcome was well on its way.

Milo soared past the injured, inmates and guards alike, those who didn’t relish brutality, who didn’t have the magic to defend themselves, who had become overwhelmed by the chaos in every direction. A pinch of guilt tugged at his heart then, stalling his pursuit of the goal that danced in his mind. Part of him wanted to gamble everything to stop and help these people.

I reached out, willing and wanting to take the burden of that guilt away, prepared to carry all of it as I’d grown accustomed to such feelings of failure. But I didn’t need to. Milo hardened his expression, eyes fluttering momentarily, and he reminded himself that sometimes the best future resulted in a few cuts and scrapes along the way. He desperately wanted to shield everyone from every possible pain out there, but even The Inevitable Future knew such things weren’t conceivable.

“ They’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine. Everyone will be fine. ” Milo zipped through long corridors, evading combat, dodging magic, and knocking back persistent enemies who targeted him. His telekinesis rumbled through the halls, cracking the foundation.

Milo arrived at the warden’s station that’d been highly fortified by the guards who’d grouped there, by the security defenses that didn’t rely on a magical component, by the warden himself who conjured an electrical barrier to prevent anyone from passing. He opened a tiny length, not much wider than the fence posts on a farm, for Milo to squeeze between.

“What happened to those Global Guild forces you demanded?” The warden grimaced, magic straining under such continuous output.

“They’re where they’re needed.” Milo eyed the sealed chamber doors behind the warden, the doors that led down to the deepest sectors of the MDC.

Enchanter Evergreen needed to join the rest of the forces below in the solitary confinement cells.

“You’re not seriously going down there, too?” The warden winced, feeling the backlash of his own electrical warding defenses. “You’ve sent a damn near fifty witches to detain a handful below and left a handful to handle thousands!”

The walls above rumbled. Sparkling scarlet portals opened. Mist seeped between the cracks of the building. Concrete divided, creating a chasm for enchanters to funnel through. The warden’s station filled with industry witches from every guild across Chicago, exactly how Milo had planned it. Hundreds of the most highly trained witches surrounded the MDC and stormed into the buildings to detain every threat.

“You’re in good hands,” Milo said, stepping onto the elevator to join Wadsworth and the Global Guild forces who were stationed to hold back The True Witch. “ Everything is going exactly as expected. ”

Anxiety gnawed at Milo’s nerves. Failures of his past crept out of the shadows, stalking him from the back of his mind. Since the protective magics cloaking the MDC had fallen, Milo had a clearer read on the events transpiring. So much of his plan hinged on absolutes outweighing unknowns. Nothing ever went exactly according to plan, no matter how well Milo planned, no matter how many dominos he personally tipped, no matter how precisely he accounted for every possible variable.

Milo used the elevator ride down to steady his breathing and settle his shaky hands. Using his clairvoyance, Milo dived into his inner core, scanning the screens that projected infinite possibilities, and everything seemed exactly on track.

Milo’s expression turned sour, fighting back a frown of disgust. For someone who believed deeply in happily ever afters winning out over everything else, he didn’t buy this easy success for a second.

The elevator dinged, and Milo looked on in horror as the doors opened. The entire floor was covered in blood and bodies from the reinforcements sent by the Global Guild. Every single support witch they’d sent lay on the ground, barely breathing, barely a thought in their unconscious minds, some already fallen to the dark silence of death.

I quivered, holding back my fear. Fear I didn’t wish to pass along to Milo, who stepped off the elevator, assessing the situation, calculating missteps, planning new phases, and searching desperately for an ending that didn’t result in more bloodshed.

The True Witch stood in her full garb from the night they detained her, an outfit removed when she was escorted through the MDC. Last time Milo saw her, she was in an orange jumpsuit, much to her distaste, as Enchanter Wadsworth sat across from her sealed cell, shooting daggers with his scowl.

Now, Amara stood tall, floating above a bloody and impaled Wadsworth, staff in her hand and smirk on her face.

“ How’d she get her staff? ” Milo cycled through visions, uncertain of what went wrong.

I found myself drawn to Enchanter Wadsworth. The memory of what happened here bubbled in his fleeting thoughts; each image of the incident seared in his darkening mind. He replayed every step as he took haggard breaths. He second-guessed his decisions as he watched those around him writhe in agony. He expected better of himself from the decades he’d spent preparing for the reappearance of The True Witch and her Celestial Coven.

In an instance, the wards had fallen everywhere in the Metropolitan Detainment Center except for the underground solitary confinement sector, where the Global Guild forces had already intercepted the circuits, re-tasked the casting, and circumvented any attempt at shattering the barriers that held the most dangerous inmates.

It didn’t stop the intruder, though. The fourth and final pillar had barreled into the underground bunker, hacking his way through the forces Enchanter Wadsworth gathered.

Long black hair, a sharp jawline, dark olive skin. These were the only features of the fourth witch from the Celestial Coven that Wadsworth glimpsed in the carnage.

Amara spoke his name only once. “ Lazarus. ” The passion in her voice when she said it, the thrill of her plan coming to fruition, the joy in her eyes when this Lazarus witch destroyed the barriers meant to hold her. It saddened Wadsworth, weighing on his heart.

“ He’s a witch with rejuvenation beyond your wildest dreams, Sammy. ” Those words struck a chord. If Wadsworth somehow survived this ordeal, which he found unlikely with each fleeting second, those words would remain etched in his mind forever. A scar that painted the truth based on what Wadsworth saw.

Despite his best casting efforts, most of the witches sliced down by Lazarus had been done so with precision. This expert witch in rejuvenation aimed for arteries, organs, and vital veins, which made it incredibly difficult for Wadsworth to counter, to heal, to save.

He should’ve focused on himself, a belief of that rang loudly in his thoughts, echoing above the dying breaths of so many. Too many. He should’ve let them perish the second they were struck down by Lazarus, but Wadsworth believed himself better than that, deceived himself into believing no one had to die. Irritation festered for Enchanter Evergreen, who’d caused that foolish, idealistic thought to cross Wadsworth’s mind after a lifetime of learning the cruel lesson that it didn’t matter who died. Only preventing the worst threats from bringing about more destruction mattered.

Now, he lay in a pool of his own blood with a hole through his chest because he’d been foolish enough to fight two pillars simultaneously while diverting the bulk of his rejuvenation toward those suffering fatalities beyond even his expertise.

Enchanter Wadsworth truly believed he could’ve faired easily against the rejuvenating witch, Lazarus, and he didn’t think The True Witch possessed anything in her arcane branch beyond what he hadn’t readied himself for, fortifying his mind against her Oceanic Collapse.

But it was the staff. That damned weapon which offered Amara ungodly levels of strength. A weapon the Global Guild demanded he keep safe for study, a weapon they locked behind a hundred layers of protections, a weapon he should’ve shattered to pieces instead of logging into custody.

Supposedly, from all of Wadsworth’s research, each gem embedded in the skull represented the leftover magic of former members in the Celestial Coven since the dawn of time, fallen but not forgotten, and The True Witch wielded that staff with such tremendous force. A brilliance that’d dropped Wadsworth the second her fingers gripped the ivory weapon.

But how’d she get her hands on it? Wadsworth studied Lazarus’ steps the moment he arrived, tracking every blow he landed on his victims, casting countering measures to heal them, replaying every second, yet he didn’t once see any indication of Lazarus holding the staff. In fact, he didn’t see a single weapon in the man’s possession. It took a few fatal blows before Wadsworth realized that Lazarus channeled his telekinesis through his fingers while he held them together and extended like blades.

Once he’d reached Amara’s cell, Lazarus broke through with a flat-palmed strike, and the bone staff flung to her grasp instantly. When she gripped it, she struck down Wadsworth and everyone else Lazarus had missed while also burning away her orange jumpsuit and restoring her wardrobe of choice, the tattered black dress, thigh-high boots, and crooked witch’s hat with the bent-tipped top. With a snap of her fingers, every other solitary cell had opened, and then Enchanter Evergreen arrived on the elevator.

Tiptoeing along her shoulder, two bone fingers tucked themselves beneath the sleeve of Amara’s dress. I knew how she acquired her staff. Grim had done it. Despite being halted by Gladiatrix above, those two fingers I thought had been smashed to dust had actually gone off on their own accord, freeing The True Witch’s bone staff. A staff that bone witch likely had the ability to move, seeing as he controlled his bones through some bizarre branch, he undoubtedly controlled this weapon in a similar way.

Wadsworth’s desperation pulled at me, holding the same sad and worried thoughts. He wanted to warn Enchanter Evergreen, to share what little insight he had on Lazarus, to prepare him more for what The True Witch was capable of. But Milo worried about something he considered far more grave than any of the pillars from the Celestial Coven.

Fear dripped off Milo’s sweat and stole my attention from Wadsworth, who continued feebly screaming his thoughts at Enchanter Evergreen since he remained too immobilized to speak.

But Milo only had eyes for Theodore Whitlock. Theodore. My magic crumbled inward, hoping to hide. I eyed every exit, craving an escape while also unwilling to abandon Milo. The sadistic warlock sat crouched among the bodies, holding a semi-conscious witch by the back of the head with a small, crudely crafted blade pressed against their neck. With the cells unlocked, the worst warlock I’d ever encountered had now come one step closer to his freedom, which would surely mean the death of everyone else.

“Enchanter Evergreen.” Theodore hummed in the darkness. “I was just thinking of you, of that time I met your boyfriend , of all the things left unsaid between us.”

He slashed the witch’s throat, a shallow and jagged cut meant to mimic how he’d sliced mine, though the dullness in his self-made shiv didn’t offer the cleanest cut. Disappointment oozed from his pores.

“You know, I never forget a psychic’s touch.” Theodore lifted his gaze. His haunting, hollow blue eyes were trained on Milo, but I felt them piercing through me. “ I’ve missed your magic. ”

The memory of slicing my throat blossomed in his surface thoughts. My quivering body in his grasp, my fear tangled in his thoughts with our minds linked that fateful day, and my frightened students staring on in shock. Bloody droplets splashed from the gnarled branches of the petrified tree, representing Theodore’s inner core as he offered the world insight into his every musing, craving the attention and carnage in equal measures.

I trembled, nearly drawn back to the rest of my body, the rest of my mind where maybe my other half didn’t sink into this all-consuming dread. Where maybe my other half had no idea of the horrors unraveling despite Milo’s best intentions to prevent the worst outcomes.