Lynette stirred her latte, watching foam constellations dissolve into the abyss of black liquid. The steam twisted into shapes resembling Caelum's wolf sigil—or maybe she'd stared too long at last night's quantum physics homework. Across the table, Amberleigh carved bloody hieroglyphs into her rare sirloin with surgical focus.
"Full moon's coming," Amberleigh murmured, her new incisors catching the cafeteria fluorescents. She slid over a crumpled flyer for the Autumn Equinox Ball. "Wanna be my sacrificial date? I promise to only nibble your jugular."
Ancient Timeline - 1920s Shanghai
Caelum adjusted his silk tie in the Cathay Hotel's gilded mirror. The flapper in his bed stirred, her jade pendant glowing—Lynette's 12th incarnation, though this version preferred gin fizzes to saving timelines.
"Darling," she drawled, blowing smoke rings shaped like Norse runes, "you can't keep patching temporal leaks while your soul unravels."
He pocketed her mercury vial, essential for stabilizing the next Spiritborn's birth. Outside, the Huangpu River reflected fireworks masking warlord gunfire.
Modern Timeline - Art History Wing
Professor Voss's pointer tapped Caravaggio's Medusa. "Note how the serpent hair mirrors quantum waveform collapse—"
Lynette's tattoo flared. The Baroque masterpiece flickered into a vision: Isolde performing arcane surgery on a Gorgon, umbilical cords pulsing with dark matter. She gripped her desk as temporal vertigo hit.
"Miss Rivers?" Caelum's voice sliced through the haze. "Care to interpret the symbolism?"
"Just thinking," she met his glacial stare, "how some monsters get immortality while others get detention slips."
Ancient Timeline - 1692 Massachusetts
Zhang Wei hid his immortality beneath a pilgrim's stoop. From the Salem crowd baying for witch blood, Isolde's laughter coiled like poison ivy. She pressed a birch bark poppet into his hand—crafted with Prince Caelum's stolen beard hairs.
"Every hanged girl," she whispered through the screaming mob, "is another stitch in Time's funeral shroud."
Modern Timeline - Football Field Midnight Dig
Amberleigh's shovel struck bone. The quarterback's letterman jacket flapped like a trapped raven as they unearthed a lupine skull radiating cold blue light.
"Looks like your boyfriend's ancestor," she tossed the relic to Lynette. "Smell that? Centuries-old daddy issues."
The bone seared Lynette's palm, projecting holograms of Neolithic hunters bowing to a wolf-headed goddess. Amberleigh's eyes bled quicksilver as she chanted:
"Mater Luna,
End this farce,
Turn their prayers
To poison gas."