MistNovel - Read Web Novel Stories & Fiction Online

Consciousness returned in pieces, a mosaic of unwelcome sensations. First, the smell, clean and sharp, of antiseptic and ozone. Then, the soft, rhythmic hum of machinery, a sound that promised life but offered no comfort. Finally, the stark awareness that she was lying on a surface too firm to be her hotel bed, with something cold and invasive pressed to the tender skin of her inner arm.
Victoria’s eyes fluttered open to a world of blinding white. It was not the warm, forgiving white of stage lights, but the clinical, unforgiving white of a room with no windows and too many surfaces that gleamed with sterile polish. Panic, cold and sharp, seized her. She tried to sit up, but a tug on her arm stopped her. An IV line snaked from her vein to a machine that beeped in a soft, steady rhythm beside her.
Where am I?
The last thing she remembered was the stage, the lights, and that horrifying vision. Everything that came after was a void. Her training kicked in, the ingrained discipline of a performer who knew how to manage panic. She took a slow breath and assessed her surroundings. No call button. No personal effects. The monitors around her displayed waves and numbers that meant nothing to her, a foreign language of medical data. She reached over with her free hand and carefully, deliberately, tried to peel the tape holding the IV needle in place. It was secured with an almost cruel efficiency.
The door opened not with a click, but with a whisper of displaced air, a seamless, automatic motion. The man who entered wore a pristine white lab coat over expensive casual clothes, his dark hair perfectly styled. His expression was a carefully constructed mask of concern, one she knew intimately.
"Aster." The name was a breath, a release of tension in her shoulders.
"Hey, Tori." Aster Ren crossed to her bedside, his smile practiced. "How are you feeling?"
"Like I face-planted in front of fifty thousand people." She tried to laugh, but the sound was weak and hitched. "What happened? Where is this?"
"You're in the Seraph Institute, our private medical wing." He gestured vaguely to the advanced equipment. He checked one of the monitors, his fingers moving with an easy confidence. "You collapsed. Severe exhaustion. Your management called me immediately, and I had you brought here. A public hospital would have been a media circus."
The Seraph Institute. The name carried a heavy weight, whispered in green rooms and at exclusive parties. It was the world's leading facility in bio-arcane research, where science had learned to measure and manipulate the very fabric of magic. Aster had worked there since graduating from the Royal Academy, a fact he rarely let her forget.
"I saw something," she started, the memory of fire and wings still vivid. "A vision..."
Aster was already shaking his head, his expression gentle, the way one might speak to a frightened child. "Hallucinations are common with your kind of collapse, especially in someone with your unique physiology. Your fae heritage makes you more susceptible to sensory overload. The lights, the crowd, the tour schedule, it all just boiled over."
It made a cold, logical sense. Yet the vision had felt more real than this aseptic room with its too-bright walls.
"How long have I been here?"
"About six hours. It is just past three in the morning." Aster pulled a sleek, molded chair to her bedside. "I want to keep you for observation, run some tests. Just to make sure everything is functioning properly. A few days, maybe a week at most."
A week. The word was a death sentence. Her schedule was a fortress, planned months in advance. A week meant canceled shows, breached contracts, and a furious management team.
"I need my phone. I have to call my manager. And Eira, my sister, will be losing her mind."
"Already taken care of." Aster's smile was meant to be reassuring, but it felt proprietary. "I have assured everyone you are in the best possible hands. Right now, you just need to focus on recovery. Let me handle everything else."
The door whispered open again. A nurse entered, her movements silent and efficient as she adjusted the IV drip. She did not make eye contact, did not speak a single word, just performed her task and left like a phantom. As the door sealed shut behind her, Victoria heard a sound that made her blood run cold. It was subtle, almost inaudible, but unmistakable.
A soft, magnetic click. A lock engaging.