Chapter 43 Witch of Calamity

I blinked, and the world twisted. For a heartbeat I thought I was back in my own memories, but the air smelled of pitch and burning flesh. I had stepped into her life. This was new. Possession had always meant seizing a body, and riding its strings like a puppet master. But now… I was standing inside the memory of a soul.

The crowd screamed with delight around the stake. Their voices were jagged with fury, with celebration, with that ugly righteousness people wore when they believed their cruelty was justice. “Burn the witch!” they cried, voices overlapping in a drunken chorus. Children danced in the front row, wide-eyed and laughing, while grown men and women spat at the figure bound to the wood.

The witch.

She looked nothing like Nira. This version of her was older, her face gaunt from hunger, her hair tangled, her body trembling as the flames licked up her legs. And yet, her eyes… those were the same. Cold, furious, and unyielding.

Anira’s voice broke through the shrieking mob. “H-How are you doing this? You s-shouldn’t be here…” Her gaze cut through the fire, past the faceless crowd, and fixed itself on me. Not a soul around us acknowledged my existence. I was a ghost in her memory, invisible to all but her.

I held her stare, unflinching. “Why did you let me in if I shouldn’t be here?”

Her face twisted, not with pain from the fire, but with terror that went deeper. “GET OUT! GET OUT!” she screamed, thrashing against the bindings.

The mob cheered louder, their celebration rising as if her agony fed them. They burned along with her now, faces blistering and bodies catching fire, yet their grins never faltered. They clapped and sang, consumed and consuming all at once. The fire spread outward, smoke choking the skies, yet I remained untouched. Only fragments of flame lashed at me, licking at my skin, trying to push me back. They failed.

She shrieked, her voice breaking. “GET OUT!”

But I didn’t. I stepped closer, feeling the truth beneath the memory. The moment carried weight, pressed against my chest, whispered in my ears. It wanted me to believe it was mine. I almost did. If I hadn’t reminded myself who I was, I would’ve lost myself to her story, thinking these were my flames, my screams, and my death.

“This is your first death, isn’t it?” My words cut through her wailing.

Her eyes widened in shock, and for a flicker she seemed almost human: afraid, fragile, and cornered. And I knew. The memory itself told me. It wasn’t just sight or sound. It was intimate, as if her soul had carved the truth directly into me. Possession wasn’t only puppeteering. It was something far more complicaed than that. It was walking inside another’s scars.

The flames collapsed into ash, and darkness replaced the crowd. When my eyes adjusted, I saw her again, neither burning nor bound. A newborn’s cry pierced the silence. She had been reborn. A second chance, wrapped in swaddling cloth, her name no longer Anira but something else. I stood in the room unseen, watching as her new parents cooed over her, ignorant of what had slept inside the child they held.

For a while, she lived without knowing me. A blank slate. And then, years later, when the spark of magic awoke in her tiny hands, she saw me. Recognition flared where there should have been none, and I understood: she would never truly forget.

Her memory shifted again. Gone was the burning stake, gone were the jeering crowds. Instead, I stood in a village choked with smoke, the stench of iron and blood cutting into the air. Houses were cinders, and in the middle of the ruin knelt Anira, no longer a grown witch, but a teenager clutching her parents’ bodies, their blood pooling beneath her.

Her scream cut through me, raw and broken. “YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE!” she shouted, voice trembling as she held her father’s hand tight, as though her grip could drag him back to life.

I took a step closer. “I will always be here.”

She looked up, and those eyes, the same defiant, raging eyes, met mine. Her grief turned into fury, and her magic awakened. I felt it ripple across the battlefield like a storm unchained. It wasn’t like anything I had felt before. It was infinite, a bottomless well that drew its strength from the very words spoken in the world around her. Magic from curses, from cries, from prayers. Her despair gave it shape, and her rage gave it teeth.

I clenched my fist. If I wanted to beat her, if I wanted to free Nira, I have to understand her life. That’s the only way.

The scene unfolded violently. The war hadn’t ended with her parents’ deaths. It had only begun. Two armies faced each other on scorched earth, their banners whipping in the wind. And then Anira walked between them. She didn’t plead. She didn’t demand. She annihilated.

The soldiers screamed as the earth itself cracked and swallowed them, as fire poured down from the sky, as the rivers turned to steam. Her magic consumed them without discrimination, both sides of the war reduced to ash. When the dust cleared, nothing remained but ruin. And the name was given to her: Witch of Calamity.

Her story didn’t end there. It repeated.

The races of the realms united against her, wielding every weapon, every holy relic, and every desperate gambit to stop her. They killed her, but it never lasted. Again and again, she reincarnated. And every time, tragedy followed. A murdered family, a betrayal, a love lost, and a village destroyed. Again and again, she reached for power, and again and again, she left ruin in her wake.

Thousands of years slipped past me as I stood in her memories. Thousands of lives, each scarred deeper than the last. Each ending the same: fire, destruction, and fear. She was never granted a true second chance. And because of that, the world bled every time she returned.

Until finally, the vision steadied. I stood on the edge of a mountain trembling under the clash of two titans. Anira, fully realized as the Witch of Calamity, fought against a man who radiated ligh with blonde hair like sunlight, blue eyes like a calm sea. The Hero of Humanity.

Their battle split mountains and swallowed valleys. The sky cracked, and the world itself seemed ready to break. But in the end, the hero’s blade pierced her heart. She fell, screaming her curse upon him.

“I will return! In your bloodline, I will awaken again, and calamity shall follow me!”

Her body dissolved, her soul torn apart, and yet… he caught it. The hero sealed her within himself, binding her soul to his blood, ensuring she would never reincarnate again, except in his blood. And just like that, the visions collapsed. The dungeon walls returned, stone pressing in on me, the smell of damp earth reminding me where I truly was.

Nira’s small body was there, but her eyes weren’t hers. They were wet with black tears as Anira clung to her.

“Just give up,” she whispered, her voice half-Nira, half-witch. “There’s no use.”

But I smiled grimly. For the first time since this began, I saw a path forward. “No… I finally found the solution.”

Anira’s lips curled, mocking, though unease trembled at the edge of her expression. “You are bluffing.”

I reached out and touched Nira’s trembling hand. “No. I just need to steal you… from her.”

And I forced myself deeper, into possession… not of Anira, but of Nira herself.

I blinked and found myself standing in the middle of a quiet village. It was the same place where I had first been summoned into this world, but everything looked different now… The place was less ruined, and more alive. Smoke curled lazily from chimneys, children chased each other across the dirt road, and neighbors chatted idly as though tragedy had never touched them. For a moment, I almost let myself believe it was real.

But I knew better. This was another memory.

I stopped a passing farmer and asked if he knew a girl named Nira. He smiled, pointed down the path, and said, “Cottage near the woods. Dark roof, white door. You’ll find her there.”

Following his direction, I soon stood before the cottage. It looked too ordinary for what I knew waited inside. I knocked, and the door creaked open.

A woman appeared. Her hair was long and black, her eyes equally dark, deep pools that seemed to drink the light. She had a presence that tugged at me, both warm and unsettling.

Before I could speak, a small voice came from behind her. “Mom!”

My chest tightened. It was Nira, small and bright-eyed, smiling as she hugged the woman’s waist from behind. “Let’s eat!” she chimed, tugging at the woman’s hand.

I stared at her. Something was wrong. Her hair, instead of silver, was the same dark shade as the woman’s. Her eyes no longer carried that strange otherworldly gleam. This wasn’t right.

“That’s not your mother, Nira,” I said flatly.

She tilted her head, blinking in confusion. “Huh? Who are you?”

The woman’s hand brushed through Nira’s hair in a soothing gesture, but her gaze never left mine. Her lips curved in a faint smile that carried no warmth.

“Just a stranger, sweetheart,” she murmured to the girl.

She began to close the door, but I moved faster. My foot slammed against the frame, wedging it open. The wood groaned, but it didn’t move another inch.

“You won’t get rid of me that easy,” I remarked, my voice low, refusing to yield.

Her eyes narrowed, the soft façade cracking for just a heartbeat, and I saw the truth beneath. It was Anira, hiding behind a mask of motherhood.

My throat tightened. I didn’t know what compelled me, whether it was desperation, anger, or the unbearable weight of seeing Nira tricked like this. Before Anira could twist reality further, I reached forward, wrapping my arms around her waist, and pulled her off the ground in a sudden, desperate motion.

Cradling her in a bridal carry, I forced myself inside the cottage. Tears blurred my vision, my voice cracking as I shouted, “Daddy’s home, Nira!”

The little girl’s eyes widened. The dark shade of her hair shimmered, then bled into silver strands as if the lie had cracked. Her pupils lit up with recognition, her lips parting in a joyous cry.

“Dad! It’s you!”

I gave Anira a peck on the cheek, the latter looking disgusted.