The Witching Hour was still arguing.
Even after New York. Even after the livestreams, the public hearing, the governments, the millions of people openly discussing what magic could do and magical beasts online like it was suddenly normal. Some still refused to accept it. I mean who could? From their normal lives to such a drastic change?
Deep beneath Nocturne, the emergency meetings had not stopped for days. If anything, they had only become louder. The chamber erupted into another wave of arguments. Some representatives insisted that the exposure should never have happened in the first place, while others argued that centuries of secrecy had already run their course. Accusations flew across the hall as senators debated whether the current situation was sustainable or if the Barebloods had already accepted a reality the Witching Hour was still refusing to acknowledge. The discussion quickly devolved into overlapping voices and rising tempers, forcing several attendants to cast sound-dampening spells just to keep the meeting from becoming completely unintelligible. Ancient senators argued across the circular hall while magical projections floated endlessly above the council table—news reports, livestream clips, social media reactions, footage from New York, and countless reposted videos of Ingrid and Silas. The younger generations watched openly. The older ones looked exhausted.
At the center of the conflict sat representatives from every major faction within the Witching Hour. Witches. Vampires. Werebeings. And yet despite everything changing around them, some still desperately clung to the idea that the world could somehow return to normal.
One elderly vampire lord, a vassal family of the D'Arcels, finally slammed his cane against the floor.
"Then eliminate the source."
Silence briefly followed. The vampire house elder slowly stood afterward, pale eyes sharp beneath the dim chamber lights. "The Bareblood woman and the pup are responsible for this entire debacle. Remove them, and public attention eventually fades. Just like the stories of ours. They'll just think it's a marketing stunt as usual."
Several older senators visibly agreed. Others immediately looked disturbed.
"They are pretty famous," another vampire added coldly. "The longer they remain, the worse this becomes."
Charlotte looked unimpressed, staying quiet as usual sipping from her thermos of coffee. Soline looked exhausted as her own kin making everything crash down.
And across the chamber—Kahn stood up. The atmosphere changed instantly. Even before he spoke. The Alpha's presence alone carried enough pressure to silence half the room. Beside him stood another massive figure far larger than most of the representatives nearby. Rurik Vann, a weredragon. Representative of the werebeings. The weredragon remained seated, enormous arms folded across his chest while scaled horns curved backward from dark hair streaked with silver. Even in human form, he radiated something ancient and dangerous.
The vampires immediately stopped speaking as his golden reptilian eyes slowly opened. Kahn looked toward the elder vampire calmly. "If any house attempts to touch my child," he said quietly, "I will personally remove your bloodline from the Witching Hour. I promise you that."
No one interrupted him. No one laughed. Because everyone in the room understood he was not exaggerating. Kahn was not merely the Alpha of the Witching Hour's largest werewolf pack. Among the werebeings, he stood as one of Rurik Vann's most trusted subordinates and closest advisors, a position earned through centuries of loyalty, leadership, and strength. Challenging Kahn did not simply mean angering a single werewolf pack, it risked drawing the attention of the entire werebeing faction, including the weredragon who sat quietly beside him. And that was a risk very few in the chamber were willing to take. Rurik finally spoke next, voice deep enough to vibrate lightly through the chamber itself.
"The pup remains under our species' protection."
A pause.
"So does the Bareblood named Ingrid."
The room became tense again. One senator tried to object.
"That woman exposed—"
"She fed and protected one of ours without discrimination and fear that the child in front of her is a werebeing," Kahn interrupted sharply. "While your houses discussed eliminating him before he even reached adulthood."
Rurik's voice hardened noticeably. "That Bareblood found an injured pup bleeding alone in the mountains. Had Ingrid not intervened when she did, Silas would have died from blood loss before anyone found him." As the representative of the werebeings, reports concerning one of his own had reached him long before this meeting ever began. He knew exactly how close the pup had come to dying.
The statement drew a brief silence from several corners of the chamber. It did not last. One of the vampire elders leaned forward with visible annoyance.
"Then perhaps the problem began when the pup abandoned the safety of his estate in the first place," he said coldly. "If the child had remained where he belonged, none of this would have happened. If your pack had kept proper watch over him, Alpha Kahn, we would not had been discussing this problem today."
Several elders nodded in agreement. Kahn's expression did not change but Rurik still stopped him with a hand.
"So your conclusion," Rurik replied quietly, "is that a child nearly dying is his own fault?"
The vampire did not answer immediately. Rurik's golden eyes slowly shifted toward him. The elder suddenly seemed far less confident than before. Soline quietly rubbed her forehead. This was becoming impossible to manage.
Across the chamber, Charlotte remained seated calmly with one leg crossed over the other, watching the arguments unfold with visible amusement. Eventually, she sighed.
"Guys, the secret is out. We're a little past the hiding phase."
Several senators glared at her instantly. Charlotte ignored them entirely. Instead, she gestured lightly toward one of the floating projection screens showing clips of Bareblood scientists discussing magic online.
"One of my teachers once combined magic and science together long before any of you were willing to even attempt it," she said casually. "Franziska already proved it. You saw the suit. Funny how progress speeds up when people stop treating knowledge like a family heirloom."
The room quieted slightly. Not because they agreed. Because Charlotte rarely mentioned her teachers directly.
"She was insane," one elder muttered.
Charlotte smiled faintly.
"She was correct."
Her gaze drifted briefly toward the chamber windows as if recalling something amusing.
"My teachers at the Lunarium follow the same philosophy. Share knowledge. Challenge old ideas. Let people improve instead of keeping everything locked behind bloodlines and titles. Wasn't that the main point of my school?"
A few senators immediately frowned. Charlotte only continued.
"And now the students are improving so fast that some of them are becoming problems for entirely different reasons."
"Problems?" a senator repeated.
"Calling them calamities would honestly be more accurate," Charlotte replied casually. "Some of them are literally taking completely different fields, smashing them together, and then acting surprised when they accidentally invent something new."
Several representatives looked visibly disturbed. Charlotte seemed proud.
"Turns out giving talented people access to more knowledge makes them stronger. Who knew?"
The room remained silent.
"Franziska proved it with science and magic. The teachers are proving it now. The students are proving it even faster."
Her smile widened slightly.
"At this rate, I'm honestly more worried about what they'll invent next than what the Barebloods will do."
Another projection shifted overhead showing footage from North's Watch—crowds gathering near the outer town while witches redirected tourists away from restricted beast territories. Charlotte pointed toward it.
"The Witching Hour has always struggled with scale," she continued. "Too many beasts. Too few hunters. Too many territories to maintain."
Another section of the projection showed Bareblood police officers working alongside werebeings and vampires near the fort's entrance. Witches flew overhead directing crowds while local authorities helped establish barriers to keep curious tourists from wandering into territories where magical beasts roamed. Despite the confusion of the past weeks, both sides had somehow fallen into cooperation surprisingly quickly.
Now more senators looked uncertain instead of angry. Charlotte leaned back slightly.
"The Bareblood population vastly outnumbers us. Their technology advances faster every decade. Their weapons improve constantly."
A pause.
"And for the first time in centuries, they are not looking at us with fear."
Soline immediately realized where this conversation was going.
"…Charlotte."
Charlotte ignored the warning completely.
"Honestly? Working together makes a lot more sense here."
The chamber exploded again. Several elders immediately began shouting over one another.
The chamber erupted into immediate resistance, with multiple senators rejecting the idea of involving Barebloods in any supernatural matters. Their arguments focused on centuries of maintained balance, fears of Bareblood using them for war, and the belief that Bareblood curiosity for magic would only make their technology even more dangerous. One even shuddered at the thought of atomic bombs infused with mana. The thought alone spread unease across the table, as several elders fell into uneasy silence imagining a world where modern weapons and arcane power were combined without restraint.
Charlotte remained composed through the noise, her expression steady as she let their fears settle rather than interrupting them. When she finally spoke, her tone didn't dismiss the concern, but it also didn't share it, framing the situation as something already in motion rather than a decision still up for debate. Instead of arguing against the idea of Bareblood involvement, she shifted the discussion toward structure, proposing that exposure and cooperation could be regulated through clear agreements, enforced boundaries, and formal coordination with their world government to ensure control remained in place rather than lost to whatever it could end up to.
Rurik suddenly laughed. A massive deep sound.
"You're seriously talking about bringing Barebloods into our yearly extermination hunts?"
Charlotte nodded once.
"Eventually."
Several senators looked physically horrified, not just at the idea of involvement itself, but at what followed it—their curiosity, the way they might begin studying, dissecting, and analyzing magical beasts the same way they did with everything else. The fear wasn't only about collaboration, but about what would happen after it: that once Barebloods gained access, they would not simply observe, but investigate, break down, and repurpose anything they didn't understand until even the most sacred boundaries of the Witching Hour stopped being untouched.
Meanwhile, Theodore quietly wished he had stayed home. Unfortunately for him, that was no longer an option. Because over the past few days, Theodore had accidentally become one of the few people capable of communicating comfortably between nearly every faction involved. Witches tolerated him, Vampires respected him enough, and Bareblood society did not truly recognize him yet, but they were beginning to grow familiar with his presence through Soline's ongoing talks with the world government. During these formal exchanges between the Witching Hour and Bareblood leadership, Soline had occasionally brought Theodore along as part of the diplomatic discussions, presenting him as a halfblood—born of a Bareblood mother and a vampire lineage. Because of that, his presence was received with far less hostility than most supernatural representatives expected. Over time, he became an informal bridge in those meetings, eventually being suggested as a potential ambassador alongside his fiancée Seraphine, who he was now openly and steadily in a relationship with.
At the same time, completely unaware of the political warfare currently happening around their existence, Ingrid and Silas were just eating outside at a restaurant, doing a livestream as people occasionally asked for headpats in Silas' werewolf form.
"Silas, stop reading donation messages out loud. It's embarrassing out in public."
"But this one says they'll give me two thousand dollars if I bark. We can buy lots of expensive yummy meat with it!"
"You are not barking for money."
Silas went quiet for a moment, visibly conflicted, as the livestream chat surged at impossible speed.
"LET HIM BARK"
"PUPPY BOY STREAM"
"HE'S SO FLUFFY"
"CAN WEREWOLVES EAT CHOCOLATE???"
"ASK HIM IF WEREWOLVES SHED"
Ingrid sighed, trying to balance the attention from the stream and the people at the restaurant, watching a werewolf eating in the same room as them, while also eating her food like nothing unusual was happening.
Since the public hearing, her channel had exploded into something she could no longer realistically manage. Millions of subscribers. Sponsorship offers. Interview requests. Reaction compilations. Entire channels dedicated solely to Silas' moments clipped and reposted.
One particular video, "Puppy Boy Being Confused By Human Technology For 12 Minutes Straight", had already reached tens of millions of views overnight. Silas still didn't understand why people found him entertaining. That confusion, more than anything else, only made the audience like him more. And every new livestream continued to push things further. The Witching Hour had expected public interest to fade once the novelty wore off. Instead, it only escalated. More clips. More theories. More fascination. More demand for answers they were not ready to give. And for better or worse, the world was no longer looking away from the once fiction now turned reality.