Chapter 1

My name is Evelyn. In my third year working at the morgue, I unzipped body bag J-47 and found my sister who had been missing for three days—her chest cavity surgically hollowed out, heart and magic-infused ribs completely gone.

My hands shaking, I checked my phone. A text from my billionaire fiancé Tristan: "Babe, don't forget tomorrow's engagement dinner. Heard about Lily's accident? Already arranged lawyers to handle it."

I almost laughed. For three months, this Ivy League heir kissed my forehead every night, whispering how much he loved me. Yet yesterday, he personally supervised a live heart extraction—to save his dying white moonlight, he strapped my sister to an operating table and carved out her heart while she was fully conscious.

Using my witch bloodline, I accessed Lily's final memories. I saw her desperate eyes, heard Tristan coldly command: "Careful with the goods."

At the fraternity engagement party, Tristan announced a five-million-dollar settlement for the "tragic accident." The lawyer handed me documents—NDAs, death certificates, and a forged organ donation form with my signature.

I looked across the table. The previously dying heiress Chloe was elegantly cutting steak, her cheeks flushed with unnatural health. My sister's heart beat strong in her chest.

"Sign it, Evie," Tristan stroked my hand. "Life must go on."

I tore up every contract.

"You think money buys lives?" I slashed my palm, blood igniting the shredded papers. "Tonight, learn about real equivalent exchange."

Only then did Tristan realize he wasn't marrying some ordinary morgue intern, but the last heir of the First Witch bloodline.

He activated the fraternity's witch-hunting trap—silver chains, exorcism arrays, and my most trusted friend Mark driving a consecrated nail into my back.

But when the ancient seal shattered, when the primordial witch power awakened, I systematically ripped out the hearts of every fraternity brother, letting them experience my sister's final agony.

Facing annihilation, Tristan fell to his knees weeping: "You're the one I've always loved!"

I smiled coldly, opening the crematorium pit beneath the floor: "Want to chase your wife? Here's a real crematorium."

…

The stainless steel table groaned under the weight of body bag J-47. Evelyn hauled it onto the primary autopsy station. The heavy canvas slumped. The chest area caved inward, forming a grotesque, unnatural crater.

Evelyn grabbed the metal zipper. She yanked it down.

The harsh fluorescent light hit the pale, bloodless face.

Lily.

Evelyn slammed both hands onto the edge of the table. A ragged, animal sound tore out of her throat. Her little sister. Missing for exactly seventy-two hours. Found dumped in a municipal ravine.

Evelyn grabbed the edges of the canvas and ripped it completely open. The sight punched the air out of her lungs. Lily’s chest was a hollowed-out cavern. The sternum lay cracked open with surgical precision. The heart was gone. The spirit bones—the sacred, magic-infused ribs of their bloodline—were expertly harvested.

This was no serial killer. This was a medical extraction.

Heavy footsteps echoed down the tiled corridor. The morgue’s double doors swung open.

Mark stepped inside. He wore his campus security jacket, a pre-med textbook gripped tightly in one hand.

"Evie?" His voice dripped with practiced, thick sympathy. "Dispatch said a Jane Doe came in. Is it..."

Evelyn spun around. She shoved her body between Mark and the gaping hole in her sister’s chest. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She wanted to scream. She wanted to tear the room apart.

"It's her," Evelyn choked out. She dug her fingernails into the cold metal.

Mark took a step closer. His eyes darted past Evelyn’s shoulder, hungry for a glimpse of the body. "God, Evie. I am so sorry. What happened to her?"

"Hit and run. Chest crushed," Evelyn lied. Her voice shook with a violently suppressed rage. She needed him out. Now.

"I'm here for you," Mark said, reaching out to touch her arm. "Whatever you need."

"I need a minute, Mark. Get out."

Mark held up his hands, stepping back slowly. "Okay. Okay. I'll be at the front desk."

The heavy doors clicked shut. Evelyn spun back to Lily. Her hands trembled violently. She reached out and pressed her bare thumb against the cold, drying blood near Lily’s collarbone.

She dropped her human disguise. The ancient, primordial bloodline flared into life.

A raw, violent surge of residual memory slammed directly into Evelyn’s brain.

The vision hit her like a freight train.

A damp, stone-walled basement. The gold and crimson banners of the Delta Rho fraternity hung from the ceiling. Clinical lights glared over two steel operating tables.

Chloe lay on one. The pale, sickly billionaire heiress. Tristan’s precious white swan. Chloe looked weak, but her eyes burned with greedy anticipation.

On the other table lay Lily.

Lily’s eyes were wide open. Frantic. Terrified. She was strapped down.

Tristan stood over her. Evelyn's fiancé. The man who had kissed Evelyn’s forehead that very morning. He wore a custom suit beneath a surgical apron. He held a bone saw.

"Start the incision," Tristan ordered a shadowed figure holding a scalpel.

Lily tried to scream. Silence answered her. Paralytics. They gave her paralytics, but zero anesthetics. She felt the blade slice through her skin. She felt the saw bite into her ribs.

"Hurry up," Tristan snapped. He glanced at Chloe with absolute devotion. "Chloe needs this heart. She needs the marrow. Do exactly as I say and protect the goods."

Lily's tears spilled over her cheeks. She stared right at Tristan as he reached his gloved hands into her chest cavity.

Evelyn gasped and severed the connection.

She stumbled back, crashing into a tray of surgical instruments. Scalpels and forceps clattered violently to the floor.

She clutched her head. Her breathing turned into sharp, frantic gasps. Tristan. Her Tristan. He butchered her sister alive to save his dying heiress. He harvested Lily's ancestral magic to keep Chloe breathing.

Her phone buzzed in her scrub pocket.

Evelyn pulled it out. Her fingers smeared her sister's blood across the glass. The screen lit up. A text from Tristan.

“Babe, don't forget the engagement dinner tomorrow night. Dress code is strictly black tie. Also, I heard the news about Lily’s accident. I am entirely heartbroken for you. I’ve already assigned my family's best lawyers to handle the police and the press. Don't worry about a single thing. I'll take care of you. See you tomorrow. Love you.”

Evelyn stared at the glowing words. Accident. Lawyers. Take care of you.

A laugh bubbled up from the bottom of her throat. It was a jagged, horrific sound. The final shred of her humanity, the last ounce of respect she held for human laws and NDA contracts, evaporated into thin air.

She gripped the phone. The glass screen spider-webbed under the pressure of her thumb. She squeezed harder. The metal casing bent. The battery hissed, and the device shattered into pieces, driving glass shards deep into her palm.

Pain failed to register.

A thick, hot drop of liquid rolled down her cheek. It tasted heavy. Metallic. Blood dripped steadily from her tear ducts, splattering onto the pristine white tiles.

The temperature in the morgue plummeted to freezing.

The ambient hum of the refrigeration units violently short-circuited. Sparks showered from the ceiling fluorescents. The lights flickered and died, leaving only the emergency red backup glow.

Behind her, the heavy metallic latch of locker #12 rattled.

Then #14.

Then #22.

Every stainless steel door in the facility shuddered violently. The heavy zippers of the six other body bags in the room began to slide open. Inch by inch. The harsh rasp of metal teeth scraping together echoed in the red dark.

Dead, gray eyes snapped open across the room. The corpses twitched. The dormant, lingering souls of the forgotten dead recognized the terrifying, ancient wrath of the First Witch.

Evelyn refused to look back. She leaned over the table. She gently brushed a stray lock of hair away from Lily’s desecrated, hollowed-out chest.

Blood dripped from Evelyn's chin onto the steel table.

"Tristan," Evelyn whispered into the freezing air, her voice vibrating with a power that made the concrete walls tremble. "You think I don't know?"