Chapter Text
The scent of spiced tea lingered in the air, mingling with the incense that burned slowly in the room. Magnus sat in a dark velvet armchair, his legs crossed with natural elegance, a book open in his hands. The candlelight cast flickering shadows on the walls, transforming the loft into a timeless refuge. On the other side of the room, Alec leaned against the kitchen counter, watching his lover with a barely perceptible smile. No matter how many years passed—seeing Magnus lost in thought still took his breath away.
“You’re staring at me, darling,” Magnus said without lifting his gaze from the book, a wry smile playing on his lips. His cat-like eyes, evident even as he read, shone with a light of playful mischief and benign impishness.
Alec stepped away from the counter and crossed the room in a few slow strides. “Guilty,” he admitted, bending to brush his lips against Magnus’s in a light kiss. Magnus closed the book with a fluid motion and placed it on the low table before him. “What are you thinking about, darling?”
“About us. About how we got here. Do you ever think about it? That against all odds, we managed to have all of this?”
Alec let himself sink into the armrest of the shadowhunter’s chair. “Oh, my dear Alexander… yes, I think about it often, and I’ve sworn never to take it for granted.” Magnus interlaced their fingers and fixed him with a more intense gaze. The shadowhunter leaned in to press a kiss to his lips. “We won’t take it for granted,” Alec whispered.
A metallic sound interrupted the moment. Alec retrieved his phone and read a message. His expression quickly turned tense. “Jace is waiting for us at the Institute. It seems urgent.” Magnus sighed, stroking the back of Alec’s hand with his thumb before letting it go. “And so our calm comes to an end.”
Alec smiled as he rose. “We’ll be back soon. And we’ll pick up right where we left off.”
Magnus tilted his head, his eyes shining. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
The New York Institute was bathed in the usual cold light streaming through the expansive Gothic windows, casting long shadows on the stone walls. The silence was broken only by the constant hum of angelic technology and the metallic sound of blades being sharpened in the armory corridors. The air carried that familiar scent of parchment, iron, and incense—a combination Alec had always associated with home.
When he and Magnus walked down the long corridor leading to the strategy room, Alec sensed a tension in the air, a premonition that something grave awaited them. And indeed, as soon as they crossed the threshold, he saw Jace already there, standing by the glass table with his arms crossed over his chest and his expression as serious as ever. The artificial light accentuated the sharp lines of his face, making his gaze even more somber.
Next to him, Isabelle drummed her fingers on the table, the rapid, irregular beat a clear sign of her nervousness. Clary, meanwhile, was hunched over a tablet, her brows furrowed as she scrolled through maps and images with focused intensity.
“Finally,” Jace said as Alec and Magnus entered, his voice tight. “We have a problem.”
Magnus raised an eyebrow with his usual nonchalant air, though Alec knew that behind that mask of indifference, every detail was being captured by his eyes. “It’s never a pleasant introduction,” he commented, tilting his head slightly. “What’s it about?”
Jace grabbed a dossier and pushed it toward them with a crisp motion. “In the past few days, several Shadowhunters have been found dead under suspicious circumstances. All in the same area, and all with traces of dark magic on their bodies.”
Alec’s jaw tightened as he took the dossier and began scrolling through the photos. The blood in the images was dark and congealed, the markings on the victims deeply unsettling. Though he didn’t recognize any of them personally, the weight of the information pressed heavily on his chest. “And why am I only hearing about this now?” His voice was harsher than he’d intended, the frustration burning inside him.
Jace sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Because initially, they appeared to have died in combat. These marks…” He gestured toward the etched wounds on the victims—symbols woven into intricate, ancient patterns. “They only manifested days after their actual deaths.”
Magnus, who had been silently observing until now, stepped to the table and gently picked up one of the photos, his eyes carefully tracing the incisions. After a long moment of silence, he looked up, his lips curving into a pensive smirk. “Are you suggesting this is the work of a warlock?”
“We don’t think so,” Isabelle interjected firmly. “We know it is.”
Without taking his eyes off the tablet, Clary swiped to reveal another image, angling the screen toward them. The symbol etched on the victims was now clearly visible—ominous and precise. “This mark belongs to a certain Vittorio Thorne.”
At those words, the room seemed to drop a few degrees in temperature. Magnus tensed imperceptibly, and Alec noticed how his fingers tightened ever so slightly around the edge of the photo.
“His dossier states that he was a fairly well-known warlock among the Hidden,” Clary continued. “But he’s been off the grid for quite some time now.” A heavy silence followed.
Magnus slowly lowered the photo, his gaze darkening. “Vittorio Thorne?” he repeated in a low, almost venomous murmur, as if savoring the name on his tongue. Then he exhaled softly. “I knew him.”
Alec exchanged a quick glance with Jace before turning to him. “Friend or foe?” Magnus set the dossier down on the table. “Let’s just say I’m not surprised to find him involved in something like this.”
Jace nodded. “We’ve pinpointed his location—a derelict old library outside Brooklyn. We need to move immediately, but discreetly. We can’t afford to let something like this sour our relations with the warlocks.”
The library was a place that seemed to belong to another era. Cracked marble columns loomed in the darkness, while collapsed bookshelves formed a labyrinth of wood and dust. The air was thick, charged with a stagnant energy that sent shivers down the spine.
“Be careful,” Alec whispered, his bow gripped tightly in his hands. Jace advanced with his angelic sword drawn, Isabelle readied her whip, and Clary clutched her runic blade, while Magnus moved with the grace of one attuned to every vibration of the world around him.
A whisper. A shadow among the shelves. And then, a voice.
“Magnus Bane.”
From the darkness emerged a figure—tall, with a face as sharp as a blade, pronounced cheekbones and a chiseled jaw, his pale skin tinged with an almost spectral hue beneath the flickering torchlight. Yet it was his eyes that captured immediate attention: two pits of obsidian, utterly devoid of white, deep and impenetrable, as if they absorbed every light around them. Staring into them felt like gazing into a bottomless abyss—a chasm of pure hatred and resentment. They were his trademark as a warlock, worn proudly for all to see. His dark hair was pulled back, a few stray locks framing his stern visage. His long, elegant fingers moved with an inhuman grace, lightly caressing the air as if already shaping a spell. Around him, the very energy seemed to ripple—a subtle shiver that made reality tremble.
A slow, disdainful smile spread across his thin lips. “Magnus Bane… I never thought I’d see you fall so low.” His words dripped with venom, yet beneath the hatred lay something deeper—a sense of ancient betrayal, a grudge that had burned for years.
Magnus remained impassive, his face a perfect mask of indifference, yet Alec felt his grip tighten around his wrist—a nearly imperceptible sign, but enough for him to notice.
“What the hell do you want, Thorne?” Magnus asked, his voice as sharp as a finely honed blade.
The warlock on the other side of the room smiled coldly, leaning forward slightly like a predator savoring the prospect of victory.
“Justice,” Thorne hissed, his obsidian eyes flaring with a dark flame. “Revenge for all those you’ve betrayed by choosing their world over ours.”
Alec gritted his teeth and instinctively reached for his bow, his trust in this man long eroded by the palpable venom in his words.
Magnus raised an eyebrow in feigned nonchalance. “Oh, how delightfully trite. I expected at least a modicum of originality in your motive.”
Thorne tilted his head, his smile deepening into something even more sinister. “And yet, you know I’m right. Do you have any idea how many among us you’ve condemned with your choice? Have you ever considered what you left behind?”
Alec heard Magnus’s breath catch for a brief, imperceptible moment, but there was no time for a retort.
Before anyone could react, Thorne lifted his hand, and a dark symbol flared on his palm, pulsating like a living wound.
In an instant, the same mark appeared on Magnus’s chest.
Magnus jolted, bringing a hand to his burning skin as the symbol seared into him like a hot iron. Alec moved to draw his bow, but before he could release an arrow, a surge of dark energy erupted from Magnus, slamming outwards like an invisible shockwave.
The room trembled.
The very air around them warped, as if reality itself were collapsing.
“You know what you’ve become, Magnus?” Thorne whispered, his voice seeming to emanate from every corner of the room. “A shadow of what you once were. You are no longer one of us, yet you’ll never truly belong to them either. You are merely a man trapped between two worlds, doomed to lose them both.”
A dense, impenetrable violet cloud rose up, engulfing them all.
Alec spun around, his heart pounding. “Magnus!”
But Magnus’s voice seemed distant, distorted, as though the darkness were tearing them apart.
And then, the world start to changed.