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?"

Lily nodded firmly. "I have to know, Sage. These weird things keep happening around me. Yesterday, I was thinking about Caleb, and suddenly I could see him even though he was miles away scouting with his brothers. This morning, I accidentally walked through my bedroom wall."

My blood ran cold. Walking through walls was impossible for werewolves. Even for most witches. But if my suspicions were right about what she’d become...

"Tell me exactly what you remember about the sacrifice," I said, pulling out my most powerful memory stone. It was black as midnight and warm to the touch, carved from volcanic glass by my relative who’d been present at the first Triple Moon ritual centuries ago.

"I remember the pain," Lily said quietly. "Like someone was pulling pieces of my soul away. The Void Walker was pulling at all my ties - to the pack, to Caleb, to everyone I cared about. I knew if I didn’t stop it, everyone would die."

She paused, her eyes distant with memory. "So I grabbed the ritual knife and cut the ties myself. I thought if I made the sacrifice freely instead of having it torn from me, maybe I could save everyone."

"And then?" I prompted, holding the memory stone carefully.

"Everything went white. I felt like I was falling through space, through time, through... I don’t know how to describe it. Like I was everywhere and nowhere at the same time." Tears formed in her eyes. "When I woke up, I couldn’t feel the pack anymore. Couldn’t feel Caleb’s love through our mate bond. It was like being totally alone for the first time in my life."

I put the memory stone gently on her forehead. "This might hurt. The stone will show me what really happened during those times you can’t remember."

The second the stone touched her skin, the world exploded into images.

I saw Lily on the ritual circle, the Void Walker’s darkness wrapping around her like hungry fingers. I watched her grab the silver knife, her face determined even as tears streamed down her cheeks. But when she cut her bonds, something incredible happened.

Instead of the ties simply breaking, they transformed. The silver lines that connected her to everyone she loved didn’t disappear - they stretched across dimensions, reaching into places that shouldn’t exist. I saw her awareness scatter into a dozen different realities, each one showing a different version of what could happen to her pack.

In one world, she watched Caleb die protecting the younger wolves. In another, she saw Aiden swallowed by shadow. In a third, Brock fell protecting the pack boundaries. Reality after reality flashed before her, showing every possible way her sacrifice could fail.

But then something amazing happened. Instead of just watching, Lily started reaching across those dimensional barriers. She grabbed the versions of herself from other realities - the one where she’d learned advanced healing magic, the one where she’d found ancient wolf powers, the one where she’d mastered witch abilities she’d never known she possessed.

The memory stone grew burning hot in my hands as I watched her pull all those different versions of herself together into one being. Not just Lily Carter, small-town omega, but Lily Carter from a thousand different worlds where she’d grown stronger, learned more, become more than anyone thought possible.

When the ritual finished and she opened her eyes, she wasn’t just one person anymore. She was all of them.

I yanked the memory stone away, panting. My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped it.

"What did you see?" Lily asked anxiously. "Sage, what’s wrong? You look terrified."

"You’re not just changed," I whispered. "You’re not even entirely in this world anymore. The sacrifice didn’t break your ties - it expanded them across multiple dimensions. You’re connected to every version of yourself that lives in any possible world."

Lily stared at me blankly. "I don’t understand. What does that mean?"

Before I could answer, the cottage door burst open. Caleb stumbled in, his eyes wild with fear.

"Lily, thank god you’re here," he gasped. "Something’s wrong with Aiden and Brock. They were scouting the northern line when they just... disappeared. Not like they were taken - like they stopped existing. I can’t feel them through the pack bond at all."

My blood turned to ice as I realized what was happening. If Lily was linked to multiple realities, and those realities were starting to bleed into each other...

"Sage," Lily said, her voice strange and faraway. "I can see them. Aiden and Brock. They’re stuck somewhere between worlds, and something dark is hunting them."

She stood up from the table, her eyes started to glow with silver light. "I have to go get them. I’m the only one who can travel between worlds now."

"No!" I shouted, but it was too late.

Lily’s body began to fade, becoming invisible like a ghost.

"Tell Caleb I love him," she whispered, her words echoing from multiple dimensions at once. "And if I don’t come back, tell him the pack needs to prepare for war. Something is using the dimensional rifts to attack our world, and it’s not going to stop with just two dogs."

She vanished totally, leaving only the scent of wildflowers and magic in the air.

Caleb and I stared at the empty space where she’d been standing, the terrible truth falling over us like a cold blanket.

Lily hadn’t just been changed by the Triple Moon offering.

She’d been armed.

And somewhere in the space between worlds, something old and hungry was waiting for her.