The world had grown bleak for Lilly long before the smoke first curled above the village rooftops.
It began quietly, the way all great unravellings do... not with screams, but with absence. Houses emptied one by one. Doors were locked and never opened again. Gardens were left to choke under their own weeds. Families slipped away before dawn, carrying only what they could hide beneath cloaks and prayers, fleeing the word witch as if it were already a death sentence.
Those who stayed learned a different art: invisibility.
Lilly stayed too, though not out of bravery, loyalty, or love for the land that had raised her. She stayed because there was nothing about her worth hunting.
She had no power.
Among witches, power was as natural as breath. At nine, a child's gift first stirred—sparks dancing on fingertips, water trembling at a whispered call, roots curling toward small hands buried in soil. At thirteen came the revelation of one's element, the quiet certainty of belonging: flame, wind, earth, tide, or the rarer echoes of shadow and light. By eighteen, a witch was trained, tempered, and ready to walk the wider world.
Lilly had reached none of those thresholds.
At nine, nothing awakened.
At thirteen, no element answered.
Now seventeen, she should have been preparing for her final trials, learning the old runes, practicing balance between will and restraint. Instead, she knelt in the dirt behind her cottage, fingers stained with soil, pulling carrots from the earth and wondering if hunger felt different for those born blessed.
She cooked for herself because there was no one else left to do it.
The whispers had followed her for years.
Broken.
Hollow.
Nature's mistake.
At first, they hurt. Then they dulled. Eventually, they became as familiar as the ache in her hands after a long day's work. Pity replaced mockery, and somehow that felt worse. Pity implied hope had once existed.
Still, Lilly believed.
Not in councils or covens or the rigid laws written by trembling elders, but in the soil beneath her nails and the wind that brushed her cheek when she stood alone at dusk. Nature was not something to be commanded... it was something to be listened to. It gave freely, and it took without apology. That was its truth. That was its godhood.
Then the foreigners came.
They arrived on iron-shod horses, their banners unfamiliar, their accents sharp against the soft cadence of the village tongue. Men and women alike, dressed in heavy fabrics unsuited for forest paths, carrying books instead of seeds. They spoke of a new god—a singular, watching presence who demanded obedience instead of harmony.
They called nature silent.
They called witches liars.
And they called power something that could be owned.
At first, the village listened out of curiosity. Then out of fear. The foreigners promised protection, order, salvation. They spoke of cleansing fire and righteous judgment, and the word stake slipped into conversation as casually as bread.
Betrayal followed swiftly.
Neighbors pointed fingers at neighbors. Old rivalries were reborn as accusations. Power, once shared and balanced, became a currency. Wizards who had once sworn oaths to protect the coven turned informants for favor. Witches sold secrets for safety. Some even renounced nature itself, claiming their gifts came not from the earth, but from the new god's mercy.
The fires burned anyway.
Lilly watched from the edge of the square the first time it happened... how the smoke climbed like a dark prayer into the sky, how the crowd cheered as if destruction were proof of righteousness. She watched flames devour people who had once healed sick children and coaxed rain from empty skies.
A new hierarchy rose from the ashes.
At its top sat the foreign clergy and their chosen enforcers. Beneath them, collaborators. Beneath them, the silent. And at the very bottom, those like Lilly, witches without power, too insignificant to burn, too different to belong.
Nature did not abandon the village.
The trees still grew. The rivers still flowed. The soil still fed those willing to touch it.
But belief had shifted, and belief, Lilly was beginning to understand, could be as dangerous as fire.
As night fell and the last embers cooled, Lilly returned to her garden. She pressed her palm flat against the earth, not asking for power, not begging for miracles... only listening.
Somewhere beneath the roots and ash, something listened back.