Chapter 1151: Story 1151: Song of the Thorn-Witch
In the gnarled heart of Daggerbloom Forest, where brambles grew like veins and the air stank of iron and rot, there lived a witch. Not the cauldron-stirring, broom-riding kind of stories—but something older, crueler, and rooted in the bones of the land.
They called her the Thorn-Witch.
No one saw her and lived unchanged. The lucky ones returned with wild eyes and mouths stitched shut by vines. The others simply disappeared, their screams said to echo on the wind that howled through the briar thickets.
And yet, into that forest walked Lina Mournvale, cloak torn, heart burning with vengeance.
Her sister, Alia, had vanished weeks ago—last seen chasing a strange, sweet song into the woods at dusk. The villagers warned Lina it was the Thorn-Witch’s call, a siren made not of sea and salt but thorn and sorrow.
But Lina had never feared stories.
She followed the melody, thin and reedy, carried on a wind that whispered her name.
“Lina… Lina… come listen…”
The deeper she went, the sharper the forest became. Thorns like fangs tore at her skin, drawing trails of blood the trees drank eagerly. Shadows shifted in her wake. Birds didn’t sing. No beasts stirred. Only the song—closer now—like a woman humming through teeth clenched in pain.
And then she found it:
A clearing drowned in red blossoms—bloodbloom—flowers said to grow only where someone had died screaming. At the center, half-entwined with thorns, was a woman.
Tall. Pale. Her dress woven of roots and briar. Her hair a tangle of vine and thistle. Her face hidden behind a veil of moss. And from her lips came the song—an aching lullaby that crawled beneath the skin like a worm in an apple.
“Where is my sister?” Lina demanded.
The Thorn-Witch tilted her head.
“Gone. But not lost. Do you wish to see her?”
Lina stepped forward, heart in her throat.
The witch’s arms rose, and the thorns around her parted to reveal a tree, twisted and blackened, and from it hung dozens of faces. Some wept. Some screamed. One was smiling.
Alia.
Her eyes met Lina’s, and her mouth moved, but no sound came.
“She came willingly,” the witch cooed. “She wanted to forget the world. So I gave her a song of silence. Would you like the same?”
Lina’s blade was in her hand before she even realized it.
She charged.
The witch did not flinch. The thorns did her work. They snared Lina’s legs, her arms, her thoughts. She dropped the knife.
But she didn’t stop singing.
Lina screamed—not in fear, but defiance.
And the song cracked.
The Thorn-Witch staggered.
Lina crawled to her sister, grasped her hand, and sang—a lullaby their mother once whispered by firelight.
Light bloomed in the thorns. The faces vanished. The witch shrieked—a terrible sound of splintering bark and unrooted agony.
And then—
Silence.
When Lina emerged from the forest, she carried her sister—alive but forever changed.
And deep in Daggerbloom, the song waits to be sung again.
Beware the lullaby with no end.
The Thorn-Witch always listens.