My mother is a witch

Chapter 6: Witchhunters

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I slept beneath the stars that night, wrapped in my mother’s cloak. The wind howled through the trees, cold as teeth, and the forest twisted around me like it didn’t want me there. But I stayed. There was nowhere else to go.

The dreams were worse now.

They weren’t just flashes. They were memories. His memories.

Enoch’s voice whispered in my sleep, speaking in tongues I almost understood. I saw his hands—my hands—reach into chests and tear out hearts. I saw fires lit in villages, women with hollow eyes, and children screaming in dark places.

But there was always one thing constant.

The people who hunted him.

When I woke, I was already running.

The dogs came first—black as coal, with glowing red eyes and runes carved into their fur. They didn’t bark. They howled. And they weren’t just chasing.

They were tracking.

The spell of concealment I used barely masked me. I ducked under bramble, leapt over rotting logs, slid into a ditch thick with dead leaves. I could hear their claws striking stone. Getting closer.

I whispered the words of a binding curse. My blood dripped into the dirt. Roots tangled behind me, rising like snakes to slow the hounds.

It worked—briefly.

Then came the hunters.

Seven of them, clad in long black coats etched with silver thread. Their faces were painted with ash. One had a crossbow slung across his back. Another carried a jar of iron nails. But the one in front—

He was older. Scar down the center of his face. One eye milky white. The other sharp as a hawk’s.

He raised a hand. The dogs stopped immediately.

“We saw the sigils in the clearing,” he said. “We followed the ash trail from the cottage. You didn’t cover your tracks very well.”

I rose slowly, hands empty but tingling with power.

“I didn’t know I was being hunted.”

The girl beside him scoffed. “Everyone with your blood is being hunted.”

The older man stepped forward. “What’s your name?”

“Isaac.”

“Son of Amara?”

I hesitated.

“Yes.”

His jaw clenched. “Then I’m sorry. We burned her once. Looks like it didn’t take.”

My heart pounded. “You killed her?”

“No,” he said. “We tried. But she was... powerful. Too clever. Hid you well. But now she’s dead, and the blood’s surfaced in you.”

I felt my fingertips start to burn. The grimoire at my side pulsed.

“I’m not her. I’m not him either.”

“Your father was Enoch the Hollow. We have stories about him—entire chapters of horror. He didn’t just curse villages. He broke time in some of them.”

“I didn’t choose to be his son,” I said.

“That’s not how curses work.”

Another hunter stepped forward. She was my age—pale, lean, and covered in protective runes. Her eyes were dark, but not cruel.

“You don’t have to die,” she said softly. “But you do have to choose.”

I stared at her. “Choose what?”

“To bind the blood inside you… or let it grow.”

“What if it’s already growing?”

“Then we help you cut it out.”

My pulse roared. Visions flashed—my mother’s death, Enoch’s laughter, the trapdoor splitting open.

I clenched my fists.

“You want me to kill a part of myself.”

“Yes,” the girl said. “Before it kills everything else.”

Enoch stirred in my skull.

“Fools. Let them come. Burn them. Tear them open. You are not theirs. You are mine.”

But I ignored him—for now.

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

The lead hunter nodded, eyes narrowing.

“Good.”

But inside, I knew this wasn’t an alliance.

This was war.

And I was the weapon they couldn’t afford to lose—or let live.

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