Lilly had learned early that abandonment did not always arrive with cruelty.
Sometimes, it came disguised as necessity.
Her mother had left when Lilly was fourteen.
There had been no shouting, no dramatic farewell, only hurried hands, packed bundles, and eyes that refused to linger too long on Lilly's face. Her younger sister had already begun to hum with power, small sparks of magic flickering in her sleep. Her brother's laughter bent the air around him, wind answering his moods like a loyal hound. The signs were undeniable.
They would be hunted.
So her mother chose.
She took the children who shone and left behind the one who did not.
"I'll come back for you," she had said, voice tight, as if the promise itself were a wound.
She never did.
Lilly stayed because her father could not leave.
He had once been a proud man—broad-shouldered, steady-handed, respected for his honesty if not his warmth. But illness had hollowed him out long before the witch trials began. His body betrayed him in slow, humiliating ways. Pain stole his breath. Weakness bent his spine. Yet pride kept him rooted to the cottage like an old oak refusing to fall.
He would not be carried.
He would not beg.
And so Lilly learned to carry everything else.
She sold vegetables, old tools, bits of furniture. She learned which villagers would pay fairly and which would cheat a girl who had no coven to defend her. On the morning her father died, she had been walking back from the market, a handful of coins clenched in her fist... just enough to buy his medicine.
She arrived to silence.
No breath. No final words. Just the creak of the cottage settling around a body that no longer needed it.
Lilly buried him herself.
After that, her faith fractured.
Nature had always been her constant—steady, patient, alive. But patience felt cruel when it allowed good men to die alone. Gods, old or new, felt distant and deaf. Lilly stayed not because she believed, but because she had nowhere else to go.
Travel required money.
And hope.
She had neither.
The knock came just after dusk.
Lilly stiffened. Knocks were never harmless anymore.
When she opened the door, she found a girl standing there, cloak pulled tight, eyes darting to the darkened path behind her. She was Lilly's age—seventeen, perhaps a few months older. Her face was familiar in the way villages remember people: shared seasons, shared childhood glances, shared mothers who once exchanged polite words and quiet warnings.
"Mira," Lilly said slowly.
Mira exhaled, relief flickering across her features. "You're alone?"
"Always," Lilly replied, stepping aside.
Mira entered but did not sit. Her hands twisted together, betraying nerves she tried poorly to hide.
"They've taken Elenor," she said.
Lilly's chest tightened. Elenor... the last healer. The woman who had stitched wounds with whispered apologies to the herbs she used.
"She didn't fight," Mira continued. "She stood in the square and said nature was a lie. That her healing came from the new god. She renounced everything."
Lilly closed her eyes.
"That's how they survive now," Mira said softly. "By kneeling."
Silence stretched between them.
Finally, Mira looked at Lilly... not with pity, not with accusation, but with something heavier.
"The rest of us are leaving," she said. "Those who can. Witches, a few wizards. We're going far—past the marshes, beyond the old borders. A place they haven't touched yet."
Lilly laughed once, sharp and hollow. "You mean the place people go to disappear."
"Yes."
Mira hesitated. "I came to ask… if you want to come with us."
The words settled like ash.
Lilly thought of her mother's back as she walked away... how straight it had been, how determined. Of her father's empty bed, sheets still folded with care, as if he might return simply because she had left space for him. Of roots torn up and replanted until they forgot what soil felt like.
"I don't have power," Lilly said again, quieter now, as if the words themselves might bruise her. "I don't belong with you. With any of you."
Mira's mouth tightened. "You think power is the only thing that makes someone worth saving?"
Lilly let out a breath that almost became a laugh. "Out there, it is. Power keeps you warm. Power keeps you alive."
"Power also gets you noticed," Mira replied. "And noticed is dangerous."
She stepped closer, lowering her voice. "You know what they do to the gifted now. They don't just burn them. They make examples."
They stood facing each other, the space between them filled with everything they did not say. Mira glanced around the cottage—the bare shelves, the patched walls, the faint smell of earth and smoke.
"You stayed," Mira said slowly. "After your mother left. After your father…" She trailed off, then shook her head. "Most people would have run."
"I didn't run," Lilly said. "I was left."
Mira winced, accepting the truth of it. "Maybe. But you survived."
"That wasn't survival," Lilly said. "That was waiting. Waiting for something else to be taken from me."
Outside, the wind shifted, rattling the dry leaves along the path. Somewhere far off, a bell rang—sharp, authoritative, reminding them both who ruled the village now.
"They're tightening the borders," Mira said. "The clergy. Anyone who leaves after this week will need permission. Or chains."
Lilly looked at her hands... calloused, stained with earth, empty of magic. Hands that had buried a father. Hands that had coaxed food from stubborn soil.
"What happens if I go?" Lilly asked. "And I'm still nothing?"
Mira met her gaze, steady. "Then you'll be nothing somewhere that doesn't want you dead for it."
Lilly swallowed. "And if I stay?"
Mira didn't answer immediately.
Finally, she said, "Then you'll disappear slowly. Like everyone else who thinks being harmless makes them invisible."
Silence fell again, heavier now.
For the first time in years, the question was not whether Lilly believed in gods or nature. Not whether the old faith had failed her or the new one disgusted her.
It was whether she believed she was allowed to leave.
And that answer—fragile, dangerous, almost hopeful—terrified her more than staying ever had.
The knock came without warning.
Not a polite rap, not a hesitant call, but a brutal удар against the door, wood shuddering in its frame.
Mira froze.
Lilly's heart slammed against her ribs.
Another knock followed, harder, demanding.
"Open," a voice barked from outside. "By order of the new faith."