Page 5 of Little Witch

But this wasn't an accident. And I had nothing left to lose if I ended up lost too.

I crossed the threshold, and the world shifted around me. The sounds of town died almost instantly, replaced by the soft rustle of leaves and the occasional groan of a branch. The light changed too — dimmer, the canopy thick enough to choke out the sun, casting the forest floor in permanent twilight.

The whispers started again as I walked deeper. Soft, at first. Then louder. The words were indistinct — more feeling than language — but I understood them all the same.

The forest was watching me.

It was saying my name, and it had no intention of letting me ignore it.

And it sure as fuck has no intention of ignoring Amber any longer either.

I let instinct guide me until I stopped at the base of an old oak, bark cracked and rough, roots dug into the earth like claws. This was where the magic ran strongest. I could feel it pulsing under the surface, slow and steady as a heartbeat. The air hummed with it. I closed my eyes and let it wash over me, felt the demon blood in my veins answer, an ember catching flame. The forest tugged at me, patient, trying to pull me under.

I didn't let it.

This place had already stolen my brother. It wasn't getting me too.

I opened my eyes and let my vision sharpen, my irises bleeding to something darker than their usual color — a trick of the blood, easier to see by in the twilight.

Something was here. Hidden just beneath the surface, waiting. I couldn't see it yet, but I could feel the wrongness of it, the way the balance of magic tipped too far in one direction, something shoving against the natural order, trying to break through.

And it wasn't only the forest that had noticed.

The monsters in the dark had felt it too. That was why I'd come back.

The Thorne family had been protectors of this town for longer than anyone could count, and no matter how hard I tried to pretend otherwise, my blood didn't lie. Every Thorne, demon down to the marrow, could sense when something in the Hollow tore loose. We all felt the unraveling. We all knew what it meant if it kept going — the barrier between worlds thinning until it split. The dead rising. The dark unleashing whatever it had been keeping caged.

The veil here was already thin. If it tore, the fallout wouldn't stop at Autumn's Hollow.

And somehow Amber was the key to it.

That was why I'd come home. To do the one shred of duty I still felt obligated to, and then disappear again before it could ask anything more of me.

I dragged a hand through the stubble on my jaw, frustration prickling at the back of my neck. I'd told myself I could slip back in, find the source of the disturbance, and leave. But the second I'd felt the magic in these woods, I'd known better. Known the thread of Thorne blood in me wasn't going to let go until it decided it was finished with me.

A rustle snapped me out of it. I turned sharply, eyes narrowing on the treeline. Something moved in the shadows just past the reach of the fading light — I couldn't see it clearly, but I could feel it.

Dark.

Hungry.

Wrong.

I stepped forward, pulse climbing, and let the magic inside me rise. The air shifted, wind gathering, leaves scattering into a chaotic spiral.

Every Thorne carried a tie to the elements. Mine had only ever been air — though calling it only felt like an insult to what it could do when I meant it.

The wind built into a vortex, and the shadows moved again. This time I saw it — a wraith-like shape, low to the ground, eyes glowing faintly despite the black nothing they sat in.

It came at me fast and silent, all fluid, predatory motion. My senses caught it half a second before it lunged, and I threw my hand up, the wind answering, whipping around me in a violent gust. The thing recoiled, snarling as it got knocked back into the dark. I braced to fight again.

It didn't come back. It stayed just out of reach, pacing, watching, snarling low in its throat — until it stopped, and that stillness was worse than the snarling had been.

I watched it retreat, heart slamming against my ribs. This wasn't some rogue creature dredged up out of the other side by accident. This was something worse. Something twisted, not flesh and not shadow, but both — a corpse of a thing that no longer resembled whatever it had once been, if it had ever been anything at all.

More eyes opened in the dark around it. Dozens. Snarling. Whispering. Waiting for something.

Then they were gone, blinked out of existence in an instant, leaving nothing behind but a cold tremor crawling up my spine. I let the wind die and lowered my hand, and the forest went quiet again.