The witch had been gone for years.
No grave. No bones. No story anyone could repeat without their tongue going dry halfway through her name. The villagers insisted she'd faded—like smoke, like breath on glass—but the forest had never believed them. It still bent inward around her hut, branches knitting tight overhead, sealing the clearing the way scar tissue seals a wound. The place was abandoned.
Not empty.
It was held.
Allan and Nora felt it the instant they crossed the tree line.
The air didn't just thicken—it closed. Sound collapsed into itself. The wind stopped mid-breath. Even the insects went silent, as if they had learned long ago that noise was punished here. Their boots pressed into the soil, and the earth seemed to recoil, reluctant to touch them, reluctant to remember anyone except her.
Bad luck had stalked them for weeks. Mirrors are splitting without reason. Milk souring seconds after pouring. Shadows standing where no bodies were. Every omen pointed here, like fingers that didn't want to be seen pointing.
The hut leaned in the clearing, its spine warped, roof sagging like something too tired to keep pretending it was alive. Not a single vine touched it. The trees kept their distance. Even rot had refused the walls.
A ring of salt surrounded it—sunken, scattered, half-buried in dirt—but still faintly glowing, as if something beneath it breathed light upward. Iron nails pierced the doorframe in a seven-pointed pattern, their heads rusted into dark halos. Bone charms, feather knots, and crooked keys hung from twine above the threshold, swaying gently.
There was no wind.
"This place is locked," Nora whispered.
The door opened anyway.
It didn't creak.
It exhaled.
Inside, dust lay thick across every surface—but it wasn't disturbed. It hadn't settled randomly. It had arranged itself. Each grain lay where it had chosen to rest, as if even dust obeyed her rules.
The protection spell was everywhere.
Chalk sigils layered over older symbols drawn in something that had once been red. Thread spells stitched into the walls with red twine and strands of human hair, each knot tied tight enough to pucker the wood. Beeswax seals pressed into corners like yellowed eyes, stamped with warding marks that watched them enter.
The witch's tools sat exactly where she'd left them.
Waiting.
Bundles of herbs dangled from the rafters, dry leaves brushing one another with a papery whisper that almost sounded like breathing. Mugwort for visions. Vervain for binding. Yew bark for death. Mandrake roots carved into screaming shapes, their tiny wooden mouths open wide. Belladonna sealed inside glass jars, the liquid inside faintly trembling—as though something inside the poison was trying to swim upward.
Strings of dried animal hearts clinked softly when Allan brushed past them.
They were still soft.
A ritual table crouched in the centre of the room like an altar that had learned to hunt.
On it rested:
A cauldron lined with hardened rings of residue—dark, pale, black again—layers of blood, fat, marrow, herbs. Each ring has a spell. Each spell is a memory. The surface inside it shifted slightly, like something underneath was trying to rise through years of sealing.
An athame blade of black iron etched with lunar phases that seemed to change when no one looked directly at them.
An elder wood wand cracked down the middle and bound with copper wire, the split pulsing faintly… as if the wood still had a heartbeat trapped inside it.
A pendulum carved from vertebrae, swaying slowly on its own. Not random. Counting.
A bowl of grave dirt mixed with crushed eggshells and salt. The soil inside it was damp.
Candles made from tallow and beeswax, studded with teeth and pins. Unlit.
Warm.
Shelves lined the walls, packed tight with jars labelled in the witch's slanted hand. Nothing inside had decayed. Nothing had even settled.
Eyes floated in vinegar, pupils tracking the newcomers without blinking.
Tongues rested in honey, swollen and pink, pressing faintly against the glass as if whispering secrets into the sweetness.
Frogs stitched together from mismatched bodies twitched occasionally, stitches tightening when no one watched directly.
Ashes of lovers who died holding hands drifted in a jar, swirling slowly… though the glass never moved.
And one jar—small, cloudy—contained something that wasn't solid at all.
Breath.
Gray vapor pulsed softly inside, pressing outward… fogging the glass from the inside… then retreating like lungs exhaling.
Each jar had a sigil painted beneath it.
Do not move.
Do not wake.
Do not separate.
Against the far wall stood a desk.
The witch's journal lay open.
The wax seal had been broken recently. Not cracked with age—split.
Nora's fingers trembled as she turned the pages. The paper felt warm. The ink looked wet.
"All is bound in balance," she read aloud, her voice sounding wrong in the room, as if something inside the walls repeated it a half-second later. "Remove nothing without consequence. Protection holds only while the pairs remain whole."
Below the desk, on a narrow shelf, sat two wooden dolls.
A boy.
A girl.
Life-sized enough to feel obscene. Their faces were carved with such gentle expressions that it made the skin crawl, as if kindness had been copied by someone who had never felt it. Real human hair had been sewn into their scalps. Their chests were hollowed slightly, cavities carved into their ribs.
As if meant to hold something that beat.
Except now—
The girl doll was gone.
Her place was scraped clean. The sigils beneath her smeared, as if someone had wiped them away with shaking hands. The boy doll remained, tilted forward, its wooden fingers split down the middle like broken bones.
Carved into the shelf beneath him, half hidden in dust:
KEEP THEM TOGETHER, OR THE SPELL UNRAVELS
Nora turned another page.
"If one is taken, the protection fractures. Misfortune leaks first. Illness follows. The thief becomes the carrier."
Allan swallowed. The sound echoed too loudly.
"So… she didn't curse anyone."
"No," Nora whispered.
"She contained it."
The hut creaked.
Not like wood settling.
Like joints unlocking.
One jar rattled.
Then another.
The pendulum jerked, swinging harder, bone clacking against bone.
From inside the cauldron came a low, hollow sound—
—not a moan.
A breath.
The salt ring outside hissed faintly, grains turning grey one by one.
The protection spell was failing.
Not because the witch was gone.
But because something she had trapped…
…had just realised its door was open.
And somewhere, far from the hut—
wherever the missing wooden girl had been taken—
something unlucky, something sick, something patient…
…was already on its way back to find its other half.