Ascension

Includes depictions of physical violence and suicide.

They call her Witch.

Not for her magic, but for her wretchedness. And so she knew the witching hour, but often wished somebody would tell her what haunts it, because it can be a struggle to define whether she is the haunter or the haunted.

Under skies that char black by the heat of the day, its darkest minutes are when she can weep for her creativity. Yet even through her tears, half-formed ideas still flicker through the bleak sea of her blank eyes.

And there was her terror, and there was her pride.

↞ ↞ ⚬ ↠ ↠

Only in motion can one combat the stillness that suffocates creation. To keep running is the only way to escape Hell’s shackles.

“If I fail,” she tells you as you cry. “Every ghost I’ve conjured will mock me.”

And the knife beneath her pillow would be taken, and she, too, with them.

“But is it easy?”

“Easier with practice,” she concedes.

The room is steeped in the dusky light of twilight, shadows clinging to the ceiling like bats. She palms the cool, unyielding surface of her blades, their edges glinting sharply.

“But no one ever tells you the price of creation. One day you simply find yourself in the freezing snow, wondering how you’ll pay for the scraps you’ve reduced your life to.”

↞ ↞ ⚬ ↠ ↠

“Do you enjoy it?”

Is what every voice inevitably asks, and she can’t blame anyone for it. Tracing her fingers over the instruments lined against the wall, she always quietly mutters her simplest response: “Enjoyment is a narrow lense through which to view craft.”

But what she can’t tell them is that while enjoyment implies a lightness, all she can feel is weariness. To create is to bleed—to expose entrails of thought that the world will devour and spit back out as ravenous criticism.

“I find it…fulfilling,” she says, because she can see what others fail to: art isn’t mere canvas and brush, but life relinquished. In her craft, though, she can sacrifice others to escape the reaper herself.

The first execution she led had been a trembling, cursed affair; a man twisted into knots of remorse and fear. Untying his cords one by one, she’d had to first fray, then rip, then burn through, touching not just his flesh but something deeper.

In those moments, she becomes a weaver of souls, stitching tales with deft poise. She moves gracefully, instinctually; unaware of the weight that settles in her gut, for beauty is her phoenix, blooming in the ashes of tragedy. The crowds will hush and wait, hearts thudding as metal glimmers in the light—a divine key.

↞ ↞ ⚬ ↠ ↠

Every execution is a choreography of movement, a dance with time itself. People arrive in throngs, carrying expectation upon their backs, eyes wide with morbid curiosity.

You feel the tension, don’t you?

You breathe it in, electricity crackling beneath your skin.

Art is born from tension, the Witch had liked to say. I wield the brush with grace. And so your only comfort is that whenever she approaches the chair of judgement, she sees not a body but a canvas. So perhaps people will remember not why you’d been relinquished, but what you’d been relinquished for.

“Make it beautiful,” you whisper, as if the very idea could transcend the grim nature of it all.

↞ ↞ ⚬ ↠ ↠

Wiping blood feels human. Reflective. It’s always deep night when she watches her chosen brand of ink stain the washcloth she carries.

Here, in these moments of thick solitude, her mind drifts like mist. Her skills turn keen. She struggles to work under the sun, whether because it illuminates what looks best in shade, or because her canvases become too energetic.

She polishes curved steel, letting the rag glide like a lover’s touch—intentional, reverent. It glows under her careful hands.

“When did I become this?” she muses, but the silence is filled only by the eyes of her thousand ghosts.

↞ ↞ ⚬ ↠ ↠

Tonight is different.

Beneath the pall of moonlight streaming through a window, there stands a boy, small and delicate, bound to the alter of her will.

“What will you do?” he asks, voice shaking fearfully.

A child’s laughter rings through her mind, a fleeting memory, pure and untainted. His question lingers, echoing from miles away, reaching her through oceans and church bells and maybe even the heavens.

“I am a Witch,” she breathes, a truth laced with despair. This doesn’t feel like art. This feels like a stain, an indelible mark.

And for the first time in her life, she thanks the Lord she doesn’t believe in, for there is no audience today.

With trembling hands, she tears off a piece of her shirt, the fabric fraying like her resolve. Carefully, she approaches him, untying him from the post and taking his hand with a gentleness reminiscent of forgotten tenderness.

“I’m going to free you, alright? But first, I need you kneel and bow your head.” Her tone is tempered by an uncharacteristic kindness while she ties the strip of cloth over his eyes.

“What’s your name?” She quietly unsheathes her dagger.

“A- Aden.”

“Aden, you are so brave,” she murmurs, placing her hand to his shoulder, smoothing nervous circles with her thumb. “Will you tell me what you’re favorite color is?”

And there, just beneath the curve of the skull, she discerns the slight notch where the spine meets the brain. The sight sends a tremor through her hand.

“I- I’m not sure. I rea- really like…like maybe—”

One firm thrust of the blade, and he goes still in an instant. No sound. No pain. Just silence.

Fly high.

↞ ↞ ⚬ ↠ ↠

The air of her stage is colder today, laden with betrayal. Something has changed. Perhaps she has changed.

The crowd’s previously intoxicating excitement now sounds horrible and harsh.

“Do it!” the onlookers scream, fervent in their anticipation, their hunger for her art spiraling into the ether. It wraps around her like a serpent—a call to arms crimson-dipped.

But her impending actions loom larger than her executioner’s blade. Doubt gnaws at her, and she turns away from the pire, away from the screams. She begins to fracture beneath the pressure, artistry now tasting bitter on her tongue.

“I don’t want to paint in blood anymore,” she confesses, closing her eyes to mourn the loss of what she held so dear.

And, drawing a blade to her throat, the Witch finally relinquishes herself.

Her ghosts are upon her before her body hits the floor.