CHAPTER 312: WRONG

Uva had never been so gobsmacked in her entire life—not by a potion gone wrong, not by an incantation that backfired, and certainly not by the bizarre results currently taunting her from the pristine surface of the marble lab table.

She sat hunched forward, arms pressed hard against the wooden arms of the old chair she had dragged from the corner of the room, her posture tight with tension. She had been there since morning, her white cloak now crumpled around her, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, revealing her pale, veiny arms smeared with thin lines of red ink—notes she had written on herself in a moment of manic inspiration hours ago.

Frustration had built up inside her like a storm with no release, reaching a tipping point. At one point, all she could do was mumble under her breath, each word thick with venom.

"Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is madness," she muttered aloud, her voice cracked from disuse, her throat dry and raw.

Yet what made it all the worse was that the method she was using—ritual-augmented alchemical blood analysis—was the only one she knew that had never failed. It had been her gold standard. Her fallback. Her pride. And now, it was mocking her.

She glared down at the vial of blood she had been working on for over six hours, watching as the contents swirled gently under the white light of the hovering arcstone. It was a delicate mixture of glowing blue liquid and dark red blood, infused with rare reagents that shimmered when active—some of which were so precious, she doubted she’d be able to remake them again for at least another decade.

The glass reflected the bluish glow back into her eyes, which slowly began to shift from purple to a dim lilac hue as her magic simmered just under her skin.

The contents of the vial remained unchanged.

Again.

She watched in exhausted horror as the blood cells continued their fight for dominance. The werewolf cells were more aggressive and virulent, tearing through normal blood cells with feral efficiency, but the Red blood—the cursed hybrid strain she had extracted from a body days ago—wasn’t losing. It was adapting. Morphing. Mutating. And worse, it was stabilizing.

The implications were terrifying.

"Urghhh! Just fucking kill me!" Uva screamed suddenly, slamming her fist down on the table with enough force to rattle the vials. She swiped her arm across the surface, sending scrolls, quills, and a flask flying to the floor. The vial itself narrowly missed being shattered—she caught it with trembling fingers, breathing hard, her heart pounding so loudly she could hear it in her ears.

She wanted to destroy it—crush the glass and let the blood spill and evaporate. But she couldn’t. The consequences of losing this sample far outweighed the satisfaction of seeing it splattered across the stone floor. So instead, she stared at it with murderous intent, her jaw clenched, her breathing shallow and furious.

That was when the knock came.

It was soft. Delicate. Barely more than a polite tap. But to Uva, it was like someone had lit a fuse to the powder keg sitting in her chest.

She shot up from her seat so fast the chair toppled backward with a loud clatter. Her bare feet slapped the cold stone floor as she stormed toward the door, her body trembling with rage. As she neared the door, she ran a hand through her hair, muttering a quick glamour incantation. Her pure white hair shimmered and darkened into a warm chestnut brown. Her glowing purple eyes dulled to a mundane shade of brown.

When she pulled the door open, her scowl was already firmly in place—ready to shred apart whoever dared disturb her.

But her expression faltered the moment she saw who it was.

Standing before her was a tall man with greying hair swept back neatly from his forehead. His long coat was a deep navy, clean and pressed, though a few specks of dirt on the hem betrayed that he’d walked some distance. A soft scarf wrapped around his neck despite the mild weather. In his hands was a modest bouquet of blood-red roses, carefully arranged and bound with a dark green ribbon.

It was the last person she expected to see.

"Doctor!" Uva said, surprise audible in her voice. She blinked, trying—and failing—to remember his name. They’d met during the last werewolf outbreak in the southern districts. He’d helped stitch together a cursed bite wound on a child when no one else had dared.

His cheeks colored slightly. "I... I hope I’m not disturbing you," he said, offering a nervous smile. He brushed a hand through his thick, graying hair, fingers trembling slightly.

"Did you lose your way?" she asked, arms folded across her chest, her tone still sharp, but less murderous now. The guards wouldn’t have sent him here unless he’d asked for her by name. So why...?

"No. I came to see you," he said quickly, his voice rising an octave as though worried she’d close the door on him before he could finish. "I—I like you. I know you’ve said you’re not interested in anything serious right now, and I respect that..."

He fidgeted with the flowers, his thumb running over a thorn absentmindedly. "But I think I’d be fine just being friends. I—I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that, right?"

There was a strange sincerity in his eyes that made something small and long-buried in Uva stir. She stared at him—at his hopeful, uncertain face, at the bouquet he held out to her as though it were a peace offering and a confession wrapped in one.

"You know I like roses?" she asked, suspicious now, narrowing her eyes.

He smiled sheepishly. "No. I know you like blood."

Uva burst into a laugh—sharp and unexpected, catching her off guard. It wasn’t often she laughed, and rarely because someone else made her. She reached out, took the flowers from him, and smirked.

Then promptly slammed the door in his face.

Only to swing it back open a second later.

He looked crestfallen. But the moment she stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind her, his face lit up again like the rising sun.

"I need to clear my head," she said. "You might as well take me out. Yes?"

He didn’t even try to hide his smile. "Anywhere you like."

She looped her arm through his, ignoring how strange it felt, how unfamiliar. Part of her expected the guards to stop them. But they didn’t. Either no one cared or they were too polite to say anything. Together, they walked out the side entrance of the mansion, into the warm afternoon light.

The city outside was buzzing with energy. The streets were lined with slender trees whose leaves had begun to turn gold and amber. A few petals floated down as a gentle breeze moved past them. The people bustled by in their usual hurried pace, never really noticing anyone unless they had a reason to.

Uva wore a long black coat over a dark burgundy dress that clung to her waist and billowed near her boots. Her hair, still glamoured, flowed down her back in waves. He wore his usual medical attire beneath a brown cloak, which he’d swapped for a lighter linen shirt now that they were away from the mansion.

They bickered playfully over where to go for lunch—she insisted on a dark, book-themed café near the library while he wanted to try a sky-garden tea house atop a high-rise. Their footsteps echoed softly over cobbled paths as they made their way along the sidewalk.

Then, halfway through their debate, Uva’s laughter faded. A chill traced down her spine.

She paused.

Her hand—which had been casually looped through his—twitched. A jolt of sharp, needle-like pain ran down her fingers. She tried to move them but found them stiff. Too stiff.

The air around her didn’t change. The sky didn’t darken. No thunder roared.

But she knew.

Uva was a witch. A trained one. Experienced. And while she was technically human, her body was incredibly attuned to magical signatures. And this—this was an attack.

Someone was targeting her.

Her smile vanished. Her body stiffened. She turned her head slowly, eyes scanning the rooftops and alleyways around them, the glamour over her eyes faltering as her irises shifted back to violet.

The doctor looked at her with concern. "Uva? Are you alright?"

But Her breathing slowed, as her entire body froze

But she had just froze in place with a look of shock on her face, her eyes lighting up as her immediate instinct was to instantly begin to cast under her breath only to be shocked by what she saw next.