Chapter 103: The Witch’s Test
Sage POV
The old crystal in my hand exploded into a thousand pieces.
I jerked backward, purple sparks dancing across my fingers as the shards scattered across my workshop floor. This was the third testing crystal that had shattered when I tried to study Lily’s energy signature. Whatever she’d become after that rite, it was beyond anything I’d seen in three hundred years of practicing magic.
"Sage?" Lily’s words came from the examination table, worried. "Did I break something again?"
"It’s not your fault," I said quickly, cleaning up the crystal pieces with a wave of my hand. They melted into glittering dust before hitting the ground. "Your energy is just... different now."
Different was putting it lightly. When Lily had arrived at my house this morning, asking me to figure out what the Triple Moon sacrifice had done to her, I’d expected to find damaged pack bonds or magical exhaustion. Instead, her aura looked like nothing I’d ever seen - layers upon layers of energy that seemed to exist in multiple places at once.
"Can you try the memory stone instead?" Lily asked, sitting up on the wooden table. "Maybe that will work better?"
I paused. Memory stones were dangerous, especially when working with unknown magic. But my other testing methods had failed totally. The seeing bowl had turned to ice when she touched it. The truth fires had flickered in colors that didn’t exist. Even my grandmother’s old pendulum had spun so fast it broke its chain.
"Memory stones can show things we’re not ready to see," I told her. "Are you sure you want to know what happened during the ritual?"