Prologue • End IT
They weren’t born with magic.
They never earned it.
No god, devil, or higher being ever blessed them with such power.
What they became was not a miracle.
It was forced into them.
For centuries, the world believed witches were creatures born from sin — women seduced by darkness, cursed by the devil, marked from birth as evil. Stories of them spread from village to village like wildfire. Mothers warned their children about them. Kings ordered hunts in the name of righteousness. Priests stood before crowds and preached of purification.
And the people believed every word.
Why wouldn’t they?
The Church stood closest to God.
At least, that was what everyone had been taught.
Behind cathedral walls, beneath sacred statues and candlelit prayers, another truth hid in silence. A truth buried under holy scripture and the blood of countless women.
The Church created witches.
Not through blessings.
Not through curses.
Through suffering.
It began centuries ago, when priests and scholars became obsessed with one impossible desire: to reach divinity itself. They believed humanity could ascend beyond mortal limits if they uncovered the source of miracles. Some called it enlightenment. Others called it sacred evolution.
In reality, it was greed.
They experimented in secret, using women from every corner of society. Sick women seeking healing. Orphans with nowhere else to go. Devoted followers who visited the cathedral daily to pray for better lives.
Commoners disappeared most often. Nobody questioned the loss of the poor.
But sometimes noble daughters vanished too.
Those cases were hidden carefully.
The experiments were brutal. Bodies were carved with holy symbols. Strange substances were forced into their veins. Ancient rituals echoed through underground chambers while priests prayed over screaming victims, convincing themselves they were serving a greater purpose.
Most died.
Some lost their minds completely, reduced to hollow shells unable to speak or remember their own names.
But a few survived.
And those survivors became the first witches.
The magic inside them was unstable — violent, unnatural, alive. Some women could suddenly heal wounds without touching them. Others could set fire to rooms without understanding how. A few stopped aging entirely, cursed to watch centuries pass while remaining unchanged.
But power always demanded payment.
Their bodies cracked beneath the strain. Veins darkened like spreading rot beneath pale skin. Their bones twisted painfully over time. Many suffered endless nightmares, hearing voices that did not belong to them whispering through their thoughts day and night.
Some begged to die.
Others tried to kill themselves.
Most failed.
That terrified the Church more than anything else.
Because if the world discovered the truth — that holy men had created the very monsters they condemned — everything would collapse.
So the Church rewrote the story.
They declared witches servants of evil. Women corrupted by the devil. Beasts wearing human skin. They spread fear so deeply that people stopped questioning anything.
And when terrified villagers tried to kill witches themselves, something horrifying happened.
The witches would not die.
Hanging failed.
Blades failed.
Fire failed.
No matter how broken their bodies became, many still lived.
The Church saw opportunity in that fear.
Only priests, they claimed, could truly destroy a witch. Only God’s divine judgment could cleanse such evil from the earth.
So public executions began.
Entire towns gathered to watch burning women scream beneath cathedral banners while priests recited holy verses over the flames. The people watched in awe as witches finally turned to ash under sacred rituals no ordinary person understood.
They called it proof of God’s will.
How ironic.
The same men who created witches were the only ones capable of killing them.
And so the cycle continued for hundreds of years.
The Church remained holy in the eyes of the world. Kingdoms rose and fell around it. Nobles fought wars while cathedrals buried more secrets beneath their foundations.
Meanwhile, the surviving witches vanished into shadows and forests, hiding beneath false names and stolen lives. Some lived for centuries. Some forgot who they once were. Others carried hatred so deep it hollowed them from within.
But none dared speak the truth.
Because every witch knew the same thing:
The world would never believe that its greatest evil had always worn the face of something holy.
