YOUR FRIEND’S A WITCH
I charge into the chaos,hand tightening on the sword at my belt. Finding out my mother was the Queen who saved this world changed everything. I’ve been studying her techniques ever since. From what I know, she was a master of sword fighting and air power.
Anything could be familiar, anything could trigger some buried memory. So, I’m not about to let that chance slip. The Bloodmoon War archives show her sword raised high, riding her pegasus with unshakable grace, and I want to follow that example. So I speak the words that make it hum with Kvirr, turning cold steel into the deadliest shield against evil.
Ahead, Sakura moves as a force of nature. Her throwing knives are slicing through norous with lethal elegance. Chains whipping through the air, attached to the blade. Each strike is precise, as a venomous scorpion, deadly and beautiful. I wonder if all healers carry that kind of strength, or if it’s just her. Sakura’s calm confidence, the way she blends power and control, it’s like watching a true witch at work. She delivers a fierce kick, as a gust of wind swirls from her fingertips, sending a demon flying before smoothly retracting her blade.
Then it hits me, cold and hard, I’m not nearly as ready as I thought I was. This might’ve been a stupid fucking mistake. No time to dwell on doubts or regrets, before I can steady myself, everything goes sideways.
Air rushes past me, a blur of chaos. A brutal collision, and my body slams into a tree with bone-jarring force. I’m stunned, vision swimming, the air ripped from my lungs, replaced by paralyzing pain. Still, my brain kicks in, ignoring the agony and the buzzing sound. I push myself up, teeth gritting as I look down. Blood drips from my arm... right around my damn sword, I stabbed myself on impact.
Perfect,I can’t even survive a hit without screwing it up. Bleeding, dizzy and a blade in my own damn arm.
I’m so fucked.
Then the ground trembles. A deep, guttural thrum that shakes the air itself. My head snaps up just in time to see a norous sprinting toward me. Its limbs stretch, moving with unnatural speed. It has leathered skin that’s too smooth and black, bottomless eyes fixed onme. Panic spikes in my chest, and I yank the weapon out of my arm with a wet, tearing sound, pain roaring through me. I scream with only one thought in mind—Don’t. Fucking. Quiver.
The impact rattles my bones, pain flaring white-hot as I slam my sword into the demon. Black sludge bursts from the wound. Thick, corrosive, and reeking of rot. I know what’s coming, and I brace for it, but still, it burns like hell.
The second it hits my skin, it’s searing agony. Sizzling on contact, eating through layers as if I’m made of spiderwebs. I clench my jaw as nausea overwhelms me; my breath is caught somewhere between a gasp and a scream. And I fight the raw, instinctive urge to let the pain win. My vision blurs, and just as I am about to give up, the creature trembles.
Its body twitches as if it’s burning from the inside out, then something changes. Its head jerks back, mouth gaping open. Only the sound that escapes…ispain. I don’t have time to figure out why. Its skin starts to harden, shifting, like glass forming under flame. Crystallizing across its limbs, crawling fast until it’s frozen solid in front of me. Then the shell shatters, disintegrates into dust, and collapses in on itself as if it never existed. I stagger back, dropping to my knees, gasping for air, blade still raised, arms shaking. My jaw clenched tight enough to crack. Around me, the battle is muffled.
What the hell just happened?
My eyes scan for anyone else who saw this... That’s when I see him. Kai, sprinting toward me, eyes locked, before relief flickers for a brief minute. Then his expression hardens, anger, sharp and focused straight at me. And somehow, that burns worse than the acid.
I’m not in the mood for a fucking lecture.
Biting back a scream, adrenaline still coursing through my veins, I force myself upright even as my vision swims. My hand moves on its own, reaching for the pouch strapped to my thigh. One of the healing potions I stocked glints faintly in the low light. Popping the cork with shaky fingers, I pour it straight onto the burned skin. It hisses on contact, the air thick with the acrid scent of charred flesh. I grunt through the pain. Thank Kvirr, the skin begins to seal in. Small, ragged pulses, and the pain lingers like a grudge, deep and vicious. This potion isn’t as efficient as the one Kai gave me on the day we first met, which feels like a lifetime ago now. The ingredients might be cheaper, but they still do the trick.
I catch a movement to my right, a wisp of silver hair, pale as moonlight, drifting in the night breeze.
My breath hitches.
No.
Please, no, not her. But I must’ve been a real bitch in a past life, because as I get closer, the truth hits me harder than the burn.Vanessa, and my heart stalls. I sprint toward her, fear crashing through me in a single breath. I don’t think, I move. Two norous charge toward me and I cut them down mid-run, blade slicing clean through their grotesque bodies. Kvirr slips past my lips, power crackling through every muscle. And something takes hold of me. Not panic, something darker, sharper. It feels foreign, yet comfortable and addictive. It ripples through my veins.
Fire ignites in my chest, and I see red.
Pure, blistering red, as I tear through the next wave of monsters, sending them screaming back to Netherworld, where they never should’ve crawled out from. I’m almost to her. But a demon grabs my injured arm. The same arm that didn’t stop bleeding. I hit the ground hard, knees slamming in the dirt, breath knocked from my lungs. Its claws sink deeper, into the wound, and I scream. The creature feeds off it, savouring it. Twisting, trying to break me with pain, but it suddenly jerks back, screeching.
Black smoke curls from its hand, suffocating, a living shadow. Then its flesh tightens violently, cracking and peeling as if seared by molten glass. The skin darkens to a sickly, cracked veneer, drying out at an impossible speed. Its muscles shrivel and stiffen, turning into glass. The creature’s body twists unnaturally as it freezes mid-motion, locked in a grotesque, mummified state. Finally, the hardened shell fractures, breaking apart into a swirling cloud of ash that drifts silently into the night. I stagger upright, cradling my bleeding arm, mind spinning.
That’s twice now. This weird exorcism… both happened when they touched me.
No.
Not me, my blood.
Is this what the prophecy foretold?
With its blood as the catalyst, evil shall cease,
That’s what was written in the temple.
Can my blood really destroy evil? Did I actually kill that thing, rather than just send it back to its realm?
