Chapter – Burn the Witch
The snow fell quietly over Ivenmoor, blanketing the blackened ruins like a shroud. Ash clung to the flakes. Where once there was laughter, now there was only the hissing of cooling embers.
Kael stood alone in the wreckage.
His hands still trembled, though the flames had long gone out.
The wind was cruel, not for its cold, but for how familiar it felt. He had stood in ashes before. Hundreds of times. Thousands.
It never got easier.
Eryn's Fate
He found her near the edge of the forest, half-covered in snow, her arm twisted beneath her body.
Eryn.
Her face was bloodied, bruised… but her chest rose.
Barely.
Kael dropped to his knees. "Eryn…"
Her eyelids fluttered. "Ren… is he—?"
"I don't know," Kael said. "I told him to run."
She tried to sit up, but winced. "They... they turned so quickly. I tried to stop them."
"You shouldn't have had to."
She gave a weak smile. "You're not... what they say."
Kael's voice was like gravel. "I am worse."
"No," she said firmly. "You cared. You stayed. You loved that boy."
He pressed his forehead to hers. "You have to live."
"I don't think I can," she whispered. "And that's okay."
"No."
"You always run, don't you?" she said. "Even if your feet stay still. You run from the living. From their love. Let someone stay."
Her eyes were wet. "Even if only for a moment."
She coughed. Blood.
And then her hand slid from his.
Kael didn't scream.
He had screamed once, a thousand years ago.
And the world cursed him for it.
The Search for Ren
He searched the forest for hours, then days.
The snow deepened. The cold grew sharper.
He found no footprints. No trail. Only broken branches and a patch of Ren's scarf caught in a thornbush.
Red. Frayed.
He clutched it tightly in his fist.
"Ren…" he whispered.
But the woods gave him no answer.
Only wind. Only silence.
The Judgment of the Village
On the fifth day, Kael returned to Ivenmoor.
Not to stay.
To bury Eryn.
He dug her grave himself on the hill behind the garden, beneath the tree they had planted in the first spring.
He laid her gently in the frozen ground, wrapped in her own cloak, and placed a dried sprig of lavender in her hand.
No one came to help. No one dared.
They watched from behind shutters and drawn curtains. Children clung to mothers. Men gripped pitchforks but did not attack.
Not now. Not yet.
Kael said no prayers. Not because he didn't believe—but because no god had answered him in a thousand years.
Instead, he whispered, "You were kind to a ghost. And I won't forget."
He stood and turned to the watching houses.
"I spared you because she believed in mercy. Don't waste it."
They said nothing.
But one man—a farmer Kael had once helped lift a broken wagon—stepped forward.
"Are you… death?"
Kael looked at him for a long time.
"No," he said. "Death ends suffering. I carry it."
The Witch's Remains
Before leaving the village, Kael walked to the field.
The effigy still stood—the mockery of him, twisted and cruel.
He reached for it slowly… then tore it down.
He set it aflame, not in anger, but in mourning.
Not for himself.
But for the idea that hope could live here.
Memory's Knife
That night, he sat by the lake.
The same lake where Ren had once thrown stones and laughed.
Kael remembered each sound. Each ripple.
And now—
Nothing.
He took out the ribbon Liora once wore.
Then a piece of Aiva's blanket.
Now, Ren's torn scarf.
He tied them all together, a thread of ghosts. A tapestry of failure.
He whispered their names into the dark, as the snow turned to rain.
"Liora.
Aiva.
Eryn.
Ren."
He pressed the bundle to his chest.
And for the first time in 700 years, his eyes stung.
One tear fell.
Just one.
And it was enough to drown him.
End of Chapter