1: Watcher in the Flame
Azramoch’s POV
The girl had no idea she was being watched—well, stalked. Then again, she didn’t seem like someone accustomed to having eyes on her.
She moved like someone who had spent a lifetime trying to disappear, hunched, head bowed, voice kept low even in her own home. The apartment was a shrine to self-erasure: bare walls, no photos, no color. Candles snuffed before they could burn long enough to cast a shadow.
Azramoch crouched in the rafters of the crumbling apartment complex, arms folded, smoke curling lazily from his skin. He hadn’t breathed mortal air in over a hundred years, but the place still reeked—grease, mold, and a scent he loathed most of all: hopelessness.
He rolled his neck and exhaled. “Babysitting,” he muttered, though no one had given him the task. He could only blame himself.
Below him, through the cracked ceiling and the thin veil separating realms, she sat cross-legged on the floor. One of her grandmother’s worn journals lay open in her lap, candlelight flickering beside her like it was eavesdropping.
A cheap space heater hummed near her knees, its orange glow competing with the flame’s dim gold. A half-burned bundle of herbs: sage, maybe mugwort, sat forgotten on the windowsill. A chipped mug held her grandmother’s onyx rosary, the beads dulled from years of quiet prayer.
He’d expected something different. Something more obvious. A witch should’ve had presence, the kind of power that bent the air around her. Instead, he found Calla: soft-voiced, weary-eyed, and too polite to even curse at the world that kept cutting her down.
Curtis didn’t help. The man drifted in and out like a stain that refused to lift—leaving dishes, dirty clothes, and his scent everywhere he went. He didn’t strike her. He didn’t have to. He eroded her slowly, word by word, until she apologized for existing.
Azramoch’s tail flicked, the sound sharp in the dark. If the enchantress ever gave the word, he’d peel the man like an orange.
He wasn’t sure when he’d stopped thinking of her as just another curiosity. Maybe it was when he noticed the way her fingers lingered over sigils that glowed faintly under her touch. Or the way she whispered to the candles, not incantations, but half-pleas to the universe. Or the way she hid her grandmother’s Book of Shadows beneath the floorboard like it was something sacred.
Her grandmother had been clever: a witch forced to play saint in a church-choked town. She’d hidden her craft in coded recipes and grief-filled journaling, burying power beneath sentiment. But even sealed away, the magic still pulsed through every word.
Every time Calla touched those pages, something answered. Not loud enough for her to hear —not yet —but Azramoch did. The book recognized her. And him.
He leaned forward, eyes narrowing. She doesn’t even realize she’s calling me.
Each night, the pull grew stronger. Every whispered apology, every breath of resentment she swallowed, each time she looked at that man like she wanted to scream—it fed him. Wrath wasn’t always flame and fury. Sometimes, it was the quiet endurance before the break.
“So this is what they buried,” he murmured. “A witch who forgot she was meant to burn.”
Below, she turned another page. The candlelight gilded the curve of her jaw. He felt it then—the wish she didn’t dare speak. The raw ache to stop shrinking. To be seen.
A slow smile spread across his mouth.
He’d already written the answer she was destined to find. A single spell slipped into her grandmother’s hand years ago, disguised among the rest. Simple. Harmless-looking. For courage. For strength. For those drowning.
It wasn’t a lie. Just a door.
“Ask for me, little witch,” he whispered into the dark, “and I’ll give you everything you think you’ve lost.”
The shadows stirred, bending toward him like the air itself had taken a breath.
The summoning wasn’t far now.
