Sixteen years had passed since I was sent to the Prison World.
According to the calendar tied to that dimension, it was still May 10, 1994. To me, however, that date no longer meant anything.
With my Ascendant, I could only reproduce small spaces.
My first success created a room. Then three rooms, then three rooms and a hallway.
And so it went until I reached my current level, where I can now finally create an entire world.
~~~~~~------~~~~~~~~-------~~~~~~~------~~~~~~~~
My Ascendant was on the kitchen table, next to a vial containing Qetsiyah's blood.
My Ascendant is superior in many ways; I no longer need a celestial event. Just Qetsiyah's blood—or that of any other Bennett—was more than enough.
I picked up the Ascendant and walked to the spot where I intended to open the passage. The location held no special significance.
I placed the Ascendant in the palm of my hand and opened the vial. A small amount of Qetsiyah's blood was dripped onto the artifact.
The internal gears began to turn; the sound was faint but familiar. The sharp edges on the sides vibrated, absorbing the blood's magical signature.
Energy coursed through the Ascendant. The gears spun faster, meshing with one another.
"Sanguinem filio, sanguinem effurgarex perpetuum. Sanguinem filio, sanguinem effurgarex perpetuum. Phasmatos filio, Phasmatos effurgarex perpetuum!" I recited the incantation as that familiar white light blinded me.
I felt embraced by that light; I felt the warmth course through me, along with the sensation of being moved from one dimension to another. I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, I was falling; a blue portal had opened in the air, and I had been thrown out of it.
Fortunately, it wasn't very high. I landed on the damp asphalt of a narrow alley, rolled a few meters, and came to a stop near a metal trash can. Pain shot through my shoulder, but nothing was broken.
I sat there for a few seconds, taking in my surroundings.
The brick walls were covered in graffiti. A single streetlight partially illuminated the alley. The smell of rain, trash, and fuel hung in the air.
Then I heard a car passing on the main street. After that, a door slamming shut.
The blue portal had vanished. I looked at the Ascendant in my hand. The gears had stopped turning. Qetsiyah's blood had been consumed in the process, but the artifact remained intact.
I smiled slightly and stood up from the ground, brushing off my clothes.
"I'm back, bitches."
[Author Pov]
Portland, Oregon
The sound of laughter in the Parker family's dining room used to be the only time Josette could forget the weight she carried on her shoulders.
She watched her younger siblings, Luke and Liv—now young adults—talking about their day's missions.
Joshua, her father, carved the meat with his usual surgical precision, maintaining the stern demeanor of a leader.
Jo smiled slightly, wiping her lips with her cloth napkin. She loved them and would do anything for them. She had spent the last sixteen years ensuring that the coven was a safe place for the two of them to grow up, even though she knew that, in the future, the inevitable and cruel Fusion would come knocking on one of their doors. It was the price of power. The price of keeping the bloodline alive.
She stretched out her arm to reach for the pitcher of juice in the center of the table.
Click!
It wasn't a physical sound. It was a sound that echoed directly inside her skull, like the snapping of a guitar string stretched to its limit.
The crystal pitcher slipped from her fingers, falling heavily onto the table and spilling the red liquid onto the white tablecloth.
"Jo?" Liv asked, cutting off her laughter. "What's wrong? Are you okay?"
Josette didn't answer. Her pupils dilated to their fullest. A sudden, violent migraine struck the base of her skull, blurring her vision for a second. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the mystical sensation that flooded her chest.
For sixteen years, the left side of her magical soul—the mystical channel that every Gemini twin shares with their other half at birth—had been completely dormant ever since they locked the "monster" away during the 1994 eclipse.
She'd thought it was rotting away inside. She'd been certain it was nothing but a useless worm, incapable of escaping the Prison World.
A wave of cold, piercing, and absurdly familiar energy whipped down Jo's spine. It was her connection to Kai after sixteen years.
Jo's chair scraped abruptly backward as she stood up, breathing heavily. Her hands were visibly trembling.
"Joshua…" Jo's voice came out as a strangled whisper, her panic causing her to forget the formality of addressing him as "Father."
Joshua dropped his cutlery immediately. The coven leader's face paled as he noticed the look of pure terror in his eldest daughter's eyes. As an experienced witch—and knowing what it was like to have a twin brother—he needed no explanation. He knew what that reaction meant.
"It can't be…" Joshua murmured, his eyes fixed on Jo. "It's impossible to escape from there without Bennett blood—how the hell did he…"
"He's here," Jo hissed, baring her teeth, mixing fear with the blind fury she'd always felt toward her brother. The arrogance she'd flaunted for over a decade crumbled in seconds. "He's back, Father. The worm has crawled out of its hole."
Joana slammed her wine glass hard against the wood, her eyes half-closed in sheer denial.
"That's ridiculous, Josette," Joana said dismissively. "It's impossible to escape the prison world, let alone a siphoner without a shred of self-pity who couldn't even break through a simple barrier on his own. He must have starved to death in that cheap knockoff of Portland."
"Shut up, Joana!" Jo snapped, turning her face toward her sister, breathing heavily. "You don't feel what I feel. The connection is alive. He's breathing the same air as us, at this very second."
Across the table, Megan let out a nervous laugh, though the color had drained from her cheeks. She instantly remembered how many times she'd locked Kai in the broom closet when they were kids, laughing as he begged to be let out.
"If that monster really found a crack to crawl back through… we'll just throw him back in there. He's still the same piece of trash who can't cast a spell without begging to touch one of our skins. He's not a real wizard," Megan said, masking her panic with false confidence.
Joshua Parker stood up, silencing his daughters. "Enough. We don't know what happened, but we're not going to underestimate him. Joana, Megan, prepare the tracking spell. If he really did escape, my blood will travel across the map to wherever he is," he said, taking a knife and making a cut in his hand, letting the blood drip into an empty goblet.
He continued as he handed the cup to Joana. "We're going to hunt him down before he leaves Oregon. If he managed to escape from the Prison World, he's a real threat and shouldn't be underestimated," he added.