POV Alpha Jackson
The sight of Alaric at the threshold was a physical blow. He stood there with a casual, predatory arrogance that made my blood boil, but it was the object in his hand that stopped my heart. The jagged rib of the Great King was pulsing with a rhythmic, sickly violet light that seemed to beat in counterpoint to the Palace’s own heart.
The water-gate—the final filter of the Silver Stream—wasn't just rippling; it was screaming. The liquid was turning black where the bone touched it, the purity of the stream being curdled by the presence of the dead. It was a violation of the most fundamental laws of our kind, a necro-parasite eating through a century of sacred peace.
"Jackson, he's bypassing the Mirror!" Amethyst’s voice was a jagged shard of glass in my mind. She was alre
