Betrayal !!¿

Title: Ashes of Inheritance

Part II: The Witchthorn Betrayal

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Alexi didn’t remember standing. One moment she was half-dreaming in the fog of her feverish bones, the next she was face to face with her aunt—Elira—who clutched a mirror that bled shadows and dripped with stolen power.

The air buzzed with invisible wasps. Her magic. Hers. Being drained.

"You lied to me," Alexi said, voice low but not afraid. "All these years. You lied about everything."

Elira's face didn’t twitch. “I gave you everything, child. Shelter. Food. A name. You were a burden I bore for the good of the Craft.”

“My mother was your sister.”

“Yes. And she stole what was mine,” Elira spat. “That birthright should have been mine. I studied longer. Bled more. She just... glowed and it came to her. Like you. You shine without effort. It's disgusting.”

A cold wind swept through the room. Alexi didn’t move, but the temperature dropped with her breath.

From behind the cracked mirror, Mara peeked through the doorway, uncertain.

Alexi turned to her cousin. “Do you know what she’s doing to me?”

Mara opened her mouth to speak but faltered. Guilt flickered like candlelight in her eyes. “She said it was ours to share. That you’d hurt someone if you kept it all.”

Alexi laughed once, bitter and sharp. “You’re the only person I’ve never wanted to hurt.”

---

The next morning, Alexi packed her things into an old leather satchel. There weren’t many: a bone-etched wand from her mother’s garden, a journal of half-formed spells, and a carved obsidian pendant she’d never removed. It pulsed now against her chest—angry and hot.

Mara followed her silently to the edge of the forest, the witchthorn tree looming ahead like a crooked sentinel.

“Where are you going?” Mara asked.

“To find someone who knew my mother. Maybe even someone who knew the old rites. If I want to stop her—your mother—I need to learn how she’s doing it.”

“You mean break the spell?” Mara asked, hopeful.

Alexi looked at her, eyes rimmed in gold light.

“No,” she said. “I mean reverse it.”

---

The witchthorn tree had not bloomed in years. No bird sang within ten paces of it, and no fox ran beneath its roots. It was a cursed tree—everyone said so. But under its dark branches, Alexi sat cross-legged and dug.

She found the grave by scent and instinct. The air was thicker there. Damp with old sorrow.

Her mother’s bones were buried deep, but not unreachable.

With one hand on the dirt, Alexi whispered: “Blood remembers. Show me what she did.”

The ground pulsed. The roots twisted, like answering fingers. And then—visions.

Flashes of her mother screaming in labor. Elira’s face—cold, calculating—pressing herbs into the infant’s mouth. A spell of containment. A sigil etched into her crib’s headboard: a dam to hold back the flood of power.

A safeguard? No.

A siphon.

She was being drained from birth.

---

Meanwhile, back at Hollowmoor Ridge, Elira felt something crack in her spine. The mirror she kept wrapped in black velvet began to weep smoke. The bond she’d created was unraveling—and fast.

“Mara!” she shrieked. “Where is she?”

Mara sat silent in the kitchen, twirling a ring of salt with her spoon.

“She’s gone to the tree,” she said softly.

Elira’s face paled. “She can’t undo what’s done. That magic is sealed.”

But Mara stood, voice calm and certain now. “You should’ve just let us be. You wanted a daughter with power? You could’ve had both of us.”

“She’s not my daughter,” Elira hissed.

“No,” Mara replied, “But she was my sister.”

---

That night, the tree bloomed.

One single red blossom unfolded like a bloodstain on the bark.

And the wind carried whispers from Hollowmoor to the edge of the forest:

“She’s coming into her power.”

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EKLSR