My mother is a witch

Chapter 8: The Severing

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The next night, while the hunters slept, I left the camp.

Lira saw me go. She didn’t try to stop me.

I think she knew what I was planning. Maybe she even hoped it would work.

I carried only the grimoire, the dagger, and a single candle made of grave wax—my mother’s, the one she kept for banishment rites. It smelled like clove and old sorrow.

I found a clearing beyond the ridge, a dead place where nothing grew. The moon was high, full and sharp like an eye carved into the sky.

I knelt in the center and began.

The spell was simple in structure, but brutal in practice. It demanded truth. Blood. And fire.

I drew a circle with salt. Lit the candle. Cut open my palm.

“By blood unbound, by name forsaken…” I began.

The wind shifted.

The fire flickered, sputtered, and then flared into blue.

“…I sever the thread that binds my soul to the one who made me.”

The ground trembled beneath me.

Enoch’s voice came instantly.

“Foolish child. Do you think cutting the cord severs the root?”

I ignored him.

“Let the bond be broken, the curse undone—”

Pain shot through my spine, sharper than before. I collapsed, teeth gritted, sweat pouring down my neck.

“You are not separate. You are mine.”

The fire turned black. My blood boiled on the ground. My eyes blurred.

And then—I saw him again.

Not just in my mind. But before me.

A phantom formed from shadow and bone. His shape twisted, constantly shifting. His antlers scraped the sky.

But he didn’t attack.

He knelt.

“Let me show you,” he said.

Suddenly, the world peeled away.

I was in another memory—not mine.

Enoch stood in a field of corpses, his chest torn open, yet still smiling. Around him were witches—dozens—chanting as they chained him with living vines and rusted metal.

They didn’t kill him.

They sealed him.

And then I saw my mother.

Younger. Crying. Holding a child.

Holding me.

“Forgive me,” she whispered to him. “But I won’t let you die. I won’t let you win, either.”

She kissed his brow—and carved a symbol into the baby’s chest.

My chest.

Me.

The mark wasn’t just a curse.

It was a prison key.

The bond didn’t just tie me to him. It tied him to this world.

Back in the clearing, I screamed.

I understood now.

If I severed the bond... I wouldn’t just free myself.

I’d release him.

The chain would break—both ways.

“You see?” he said, smiling. “She made you a lock. But you can also be the door.”

I shook, hand clenched on the dagger. The grimoire burned beside me.

I had a choice.

Sever the bond—and risk unleashing him fully.

Or let it remain—and be devoured slowly from the inside.

My hands bled. My breath came ragged.

And still, I spoke.

“Let the fire eat the seed. Let the blood forget its source.”

Then I stabbed the dagger into my own chest—through the mark.

The pain was unbearable.

Light exploded from the wound.

A scream tore through the woods—his, not mine.

He was being dragged back. Pulled down. The bond was breaking—but not cleanly.

The mark splintered across my chest, burning black into ash.

And then—silence.

I collapsed, heart barely beating, vision fading.

But I was still alive.

I had done it.

The bond was severed.

But in the final second before I blacked out...

I saw him again.

Not screaming.

Not afraid.

Just smiling.

“Good,” he whispered. “Now we can start over.”