My mother is a witch

Chapter 14::The Devil You Inherit

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The villagers called for my death.

They said I was the witch’s heir. A devil in disguise. A child of rot and ruin. They weren’t entirely wrong.

By morning, the priest’s body had been nailed to the chapel door. My name scrawled in blood below it. No one had seen who did it. But they believed they had.

They believed in me.

In what I was becoming.

“They’ll kill you,” Lira said as we hid in the bell tower ruins. “Unless you leave now.”

“I can’t run,” I replied. “Not anymore. Not with this... thing growing inside me.”

She looked at me, pain tightening her eyes. “Then what do we do?”

I didn’t answer immediately. My mother’s words still echoed in my mind:

> You’ll have to become something worse.

Maybe I already had.

That night, I returned to the place where she died.

The tree was still there—the twisted oak, scorched black by her execution fire. Beneath it, I dug with my hands until my fingers bled. Roots tangled around my wrists like veins.

At the bottom, I found it: her pendant.

A glass orb filled with ash and bone fragments. Her core. Every witch has one.

I held it in my palm and whispered:

“Show me.”

The orb lit up with a sickly blue light. Visions pierced my skull.

The day she made the pact. Her slicing her palm, blood dripping into a bowl of salt and shadow. Enoch rising from the smoke, fangs grinning, wings of bone and fire.

And then—me. A baby. Crying. Marked with his sigil. A gift. A price.

I dropped the orb.

My hands shook.

I was never meant to be a boy. I was a bargain.

I screamed. The forest screamed back.

Branches snapped. Crows scattered. The earth opened for just a moment—and a whisper crawled through:

> “You belong to me, Isaac. Let me in.”

I walked back to the village.

The torches were already lit. The mob was gathering.

A man threw a stone that missed my face by inches. “Witchspawn!”

Another shouted, “Your mother cursed us! You’ll finish what she started!”

I raised my hands. Calm. Silent.

And then... I let it happen.

The power uncoiled from my chest like a serpent.

The pendant rose in the air and shattered, releasing a cloud of black mist that spread like ink in water. The villagers stopped shouting. Some began to cough. Others dropped to their knees, clutching their throats.

I felt their fear—and I drank it.

But I didn’t kill them.

I showed them.

Their own sins. Their lies. Their secrets. Each face contorted in horror as they saw what they truly were: cruel, greedy, selfish.

And I said nothing.

Because there was nothing left to say.

Lira stood behind me, blade drawn—but not against me.

When it was over, the mist withdrew.

Some villagers fled. Some knelt. None dared speak.

“I didn’t want this,” I told Lira. “But maybe it’s the only way.”

“You’re not him,” she whispered. “You’re not Enoch.”

“No,” I said, staring into the smoldering sky. “I’m what comes after him.”

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That night, I lit the fires at the edge of the village. The boundary burned. The curse was no longer just mine.

It belonged to all of us now.

And somewhere, far beneath the roots of the forest, I felt him stir.

Enoch was waking