The silver mist curdled.
The shard of black glass beneath their feet cracked like thin ice as violet light bled upward through the fissures. Kara and Tany staggered apart, laughter dying in their throats. The light coalesced, thickened, and the Witch of Grim stepped out of it whole and remade.
No more tattered silk or frostbitten skin. She wore seamless armor of living shadow that moved like liquid obsidian, every plate etched with seals that crawled and rewrote themselves faster than the eye could follow.
Her silver hair had become blades, each strand a monomolecular edge that sliced the mist as she turned her head. Eyes of frozen ash were gone; in their place burned twin furnaces of violet fire. She flexed her fingers once, and the dimension itself flinched.
Kara tasted blood and exhaustion. "We killed you."
"You burned a shell," the Witch answered, voice calm, resonant, everywhere at once. "I am the debt between worlds. Debts do not die."
One instant twenty paces away, the next her palm struck Kara's sternum with the sound of a cathedral bell breaking. Kara flew backward, ribs caving, blood spraying in a perfect arc. She hit the glass hard enough to spiderweb it for thirty feet.
CRASH!
Tany spun her herself, emerald runes flaring. "Vortex caeli!"
A cyclone of golden blades erupted around the Witch. The Witch walked through it. Each blade shattered against her shadow armor like glass against stone.
She caught Tany's hand mid-spin, twisted. Tany folded, air exploding from her lungs, and the Witch followed with an elbow to the temple that sent her skidding across the shard unconscious.
Kara forced herself upright, coughing crimson. "Ignis purificans, maximus!"
A white-hot sun blossomed in her palms and rocketed forward. The Witch sidestepped, caught the sun between two fingers, and crushed it into sparks that died before they touched the ground.
Then she was on Kara with a flurry of strikes too fast to follow: palm, heel, knee, elbow, edge of hand. Each blow landed with the precision of centuries and the force of collapsing stars.
Kara blocked three, four, five, then the sixth slipped past and shattered her left arm at the shoulder. The seventh lifted her off her feet and hurled her into the void beyond the shard.
She clawed at nothing, falling, until the Witch's fingers closed around her throat and slammed her back down. Glass exploded beneath them.
CLASH!
Tany stirred, blood running from her ear. She rose on shaking legs. The Witch met her halfway. A spinning kick caught Tany under the chin, launching her upward. Mid-air the Witch leapt, caught Tany by the ankle, and whipped her down like a flail. The impact cratered the shard deeper. Tany did not rise again.
Kara tried one last spell, voice ragged. "Sanguis… vitae… dona…"
The Witch's shadow armor unfolded into wings of black blades. She drove downward, fist cocked for the killing blow.
The fist never landed, for a wall of violet-black fire erupted between them. The Witch's arm stopped an inch from Kara's face, caught in an invisible grip that made the dimension groan. Shadows recoiled from a new presence that stepped out of nothing itself.
Hecate.
Torch in one hand, twin serpent staff in the other, eyes like dying galaxies. The air around her rippled with the weight of every crossroads ever walked.
The Witch snarled, trying to pull free. Space warped and screamed, but the grip held.
Hecate's voice was quiet, yet it drowned every other sound. "You overstepped, child. These two are under my aegis."
The Witch spat violet fire that turned to ash before it touched Hecate's robes. "Look who's back in the portal in which she came."
"You would know all about that, uh," Hecate asked.
She flicked one finger.
The Witch of Grim flew backward as though struck by the hand of a god, armor cracking, seals bleeding light. She hit the edge of the shard, tumbled into the mist, and kept falling until the void swallowed her shriek.
Silence returned, broken only by Kara's wet breathing and Tany's faint groan.
Hecate turned to them. The torchlight softened as she knelt, pressing two fingers to Kara's forehead, then Tany's. Wounds closed. Bones knit. Blood retreated into flesh.
Kara tried to speak. Hecate placed a finger across her lips.
"For you to be one fourth witch, you held up good."
She rose, looked once into the mist where the Witch had vanished, and the serpents on her staff hissed in perfect unison.
The shard steadied and rhe mist was calmed.
Kara and Tany lay side by side, alive, unbroken, guarded by the witch who had chosen them over an ancient, vengeful peer.
Above them, Hecate waited, torch burning steady, patient as endings and beginnings both.
The torch in Hecate's hand burned lower, its violet flame licking the mist without consuming it. Kara pushed herself to sitting, cradling the arm that had been shattered moments ago.
Pain lingered only as memory; the bone felt stronger than before, threaded with faint silver light that pulsed in time with her heartbeat.
Tany rolled to her knees, coughing once, then bowed her head until her forehead touched the glass. "Thank you."
Hecate's gaze moved between them, ancient and unreadable and before Tany and Kara knew it, they were being teleported.
THUD!
Both witches fell ontop of Sous who's eyes were swirling with black lines. Faye and Shadow helped the women up while Pamoen sat to the side on a broken and fallen pillar.
Both women lunged at Sous to hug her. They squeezes the Alpha tight barely able to let her breathe.
"What happened?" Faye asked.
"Hacate came to the rescued," Tany answered. "She's fighting Grim."
"The one responsible for all of this. She set Apex up from the very beginning. Ever since the pack started. Feeling them with ideas of power and colonization," Sous exclaimed.
Kara walks over to Pamoen. The little girl looked so different than when she had left Faelock. Kara smiled and hugged her daughter.