Seraphina glided to her throne—a throne carved from the petrified heart of a redwood she herself had raised from a seed a century ago. She sat, crossed one leg over the other, and let the silence expand until it hurt.
The rain over Salem’s End had a memory. It remembered the fires, the stones, the whispered names. Tonight, it fell in sheets, drumming a frantic rhythm against the stained glass of the Ivory Tower—the last covenstead in the Northeast.
The younger man, mouth still sealed, made a muffled, desperate sound. Dominant Witches
“They’re here, High Witch,” a novice whispered, her voice trembling not from cold, but from the sheer gravity of the woman before her.
“He’ll breathe,” Seraphina said calmly. “But he won’t interrupt. That’s the first lesson. The old world was run by your kind—with your wars, your boardrooms, your desperate little hierarchies. You broke the planet. Now, you need us to fix it. But we are not repairwomen. We are dominant .” Seraphina glided to her throne—a throne carved from
“High Witch Blackwood,” the lead diplomat, a man named Graves, began. He attempted a smile. It failed. “We’ve come to negotiate terms for weather stabilization.”
Inside, Seraphina Blackwood, the High Witch of the Eastern Circle, adjusted the obsidian choker at her throat. It pulsed with a low, amber light. Power. Authority. The kind that bent the knee of governors and made senators forget their own names. It remembered the fires, the stones, the whispered names
Seraphina knelt before Graves—not in supplication, but like a chess player examining a doomed king. “You came here thinking you had leverage. That we needed your permission, your treaties, your legitimacy . Darling.” She touched his chin with one cool finger. “We are witches. We were burning before you had grammar. We will be dancing on your graves before your grandchildren learn to lie.”
The men exchanged glances. One of them, younger, bristled. “Now, see here—”
But Seraphina had no intention of simply helping .