Chapter 78: Graveyard of Sins (3)

Some had sensed the change. Others had seized control of it instinctively, empowering their bodies. Many had undergone it without understanding what had happened.

Yet they had all learned the same truth: the Adsagsona they knew was a witch.

The crowd found her. Once they did, some began to pelt her with stones, while others yelled and many simply watched.

She paid little attention to the feeble attacks, even letting the harmless stones strike her. At maximum Aether capacity, her body was far too resilient for them to break her skin.

When the crowd eventually filled the entire street, she moved.

Controlling the wind with absolute precision, Adsagsona stepped off the roof and stood upon the air. Suspended above them, she roared to the crowd below.

“Cease this foolish insolence at once and heed my words!”

A few still threw stones, but many grew too frightened to even lift a finger. With Aether now awakened within them, even those who couldn’t consciously control it could feel the sheer gulf of power between them.

“The power you believe defines a witch is nothing vile! It is a pure force that exists within all life, known as Aether. A ‘witch’ is merely one who has grown aware of the power already inside them.”

Adsagsona’s face shimmered in the morning light, the scar on the right side of her face catching the sun for all to see.

“Persecute me if you wish, but don’t dare hide behind ignorance. I have awakened the Aether within each of you. Tell me… if wielding that power makes me a witch, what does that make all of you?”

A man called out from the crowd:

“But you did this to us! Witch!”

“And what’s so wrong with that? You there. Your talent for sensing Aether is exceptional. Tell me, does the power inside you truly feel wicked?”

The man averted his gaze and dropped the stone he clutched.

His silence was answer enough.

“I offer you a choice: accept this power and use it to defend our town, or reject it and die clinging to the belief that power alone makes someone vile.”

Silence followed. Adsagsona could have forced them to obey, but doing so would only replace one form of persecution with another. She had given them the means to survive. Whether they accepted it had to remain their choice.

At last, the man she’d taken as her husband stepped forward.

Relief loosened something in her chest, though she allowed none of it to show. Many gave him terrible looks and threatened to pelt him, but then another stepped forward. Then another followed.

One by one, those willing to accept her outnumbered those who still rejected her.

Only then did Adsagsona begin teaching them. She offered the guidance she wished she’d possessed: instructions far clearer, more detailed, and more accessible than anything she’d pieced together through her own deconstructive, self-taught method.

Her lessons weren’t perfect, but by the end of the single day they had left, many had learned enough to wield Aether.

When the army marched upon their town, it found a horde of “witches” at the ready, led by Adsagsona, the spellweaver.

The army was decimated and forced to retreat without a single casualty among the townspeople.

The only thing that fell that day was their hateful tradition.

Over the following years, Adsagsona openly trained the townspeople. As their command of Aether grew, so did the legend surrounding them, always with her at its center.

Before long, the people of the world began referring to the nameless town of “witches” by her name alone: Adsagsona.

A name its people embraced.

The outside world, too fearful of Adsagsona to challenge them again, left the town to decades of peace.

With no enemies left to fight, Adsagsona increasingly found herself adrift in her memories. Her thoughts returned most often to the three women whose deaths had made everything possible.

Gratitude had always been tangled with guilt, but after reflecting on the quest she’d completed and the tablet’s advice that had saved the town, Adsagsona finally found the courage to search for their graves.

They were unmarked, making them painfully difficult to locate, but she eventually tracked down an area where residual Aether remained unusually dense. Even after nearly sixty years, the women’s marks endured.

At the site, Adsagsona spoke to nothing for a time, even showing off the Larzac Tablet to the wind. The absurdity of offering her gratitude when no one remained to receive it awakened a desire she had never allowed herself to consider.

She had spent sixty years proving that Aether could reshape what others considered immutable. Why, then, should death be the one boundary she accepted?

Looking down at the tablet, she whispered:

“H-how… can I revive them?”

Aether wasn’t boundless, but she had never glimpsed its limits. Reviving them might not be impossible.

A phrase slowly etched itself across the stone, demanding that she speak it aloud. After a moment’s hesitation, she obliged:

“Glacadóir na beatha, a Dhia na ndéithe, glac le mo thairiscint. Cnámh, feoil, anáil. Is mise go deo. Cnámh, feoil, anáil. Guím ort, ar ais chugam.”

A moment later, a shockwave of Aether shot through the land.

Then, three ghostly figures clawed their way out of the dirt, appearing before her.

Smiling, she asked the ghosts while touching her scar:

“Do you… remember me?”

The ghost of the true Adsagsona smiled.

“Of course we do.”

Adsagsona sat and regaled them with the tale of how she had found the Larzac Tablet and spread Aether throughout the town. No matter what she said, the three specters only smiled; unwavering expressions.

While Adsagsona was happy to finally thank the women, her gratitude alone wasn’t enough. She wanted to return the lives that had been stolen from them, not simply return them as ghosts. Turning to the tablet, she asked:

“How do I return them to being human?”

‘Settle their past grudges, and they will regain their lost life.’

As another piece of the tablet crumbled away, Adsagsona realized that only one use remained before it became too damaged to answer her again.

The specters saw the stone deteriorating and immediately understood. Knowing their grudges had to be settled, Adsagsona asked each what she could do to grant them peace.

All three gave the same answer: peace itself.

Adsagsona showed them the town, hoping that what she’d built would be enough. They told her it wasn’t. They wanted peace throughout the world, not merely within one town.

If persecution depended upon separating “witches” from ordinary people, Adsagsona saw only one way to fulfill their desire: erase that distinction entirely by awakening everyone, just as she had awakened her village.

She wanted to repay the women who had made her life possible while ensuring that no one else would ever be condemned for possessing Aether.

Wasting no time, she set off on her journey.

Visiting city after city, the Weaver of Spells spread the knowledge of Aether.

It took nearly a decade of traveling and teaching, but the word “witch” lost all meaning.

When she returned to the specters, she told them what she had accomplished.

They snickered. Their once-amicable smiles twisted into something sinister as they offered their venomous thanks.

The unknown spell she’d initially casted to make them rise had finally been completed.

Flesh began to form around their bodies, and they immediately attacked Adsagsona.

Confusion held her for only an instant before survival forced her to retaliate. She destroyed all three bodies before their transformations could finish, yet although their flesh died, their spectral forms endured. Worse, they could still wield Aether.

As the battle dragged on, Adsagsona learned the truth about witches from the taunts they used.

The spell hadn’t resurrected the witches themselves. It had created golems from the Aether they’d left behind, each possessing only the resentment that had consumed them in their final moments.

And that resentment was for the world order they subscribed to.

They wanted it to be destroyed.

Those known as “witches” had created the moniker themselves and deliberately branded their kind as heretics. They had done so to keep the existence of Aether hidden from the populace.

For once that knowledge escaped their control and ordinary people learned to wield it, devastation would consume the land.

Adsagsona had believed that equality would end persecution. Instead, she had endangered the world and restored the very women who intended to exploit it.

She couldn’t undo what she’d done, but she could still protect the people who would one day suffer because of her choices.

She sacrificed her life to seal away the specters while also creating a barrier around the town that would prevent those who had learned Aether through her teachings while traveling from invading.

The next few years in the town were peaceful. Those who remained didn’t blame Adsagsona for what she’d done. In fact, they lauded her for her sacrifice. They even crafted a statue of her and placed it where she had fought the specters for so long.

***

Zayn stared blankly at the last page of the diary.

The entire thing was written in first person, so…

‘How did she chronicle her own death?’

Even if she’d somehow written during the battle, how could she have known what happened after she died?

Plus…

‘Spells.’

They seemed fundamentally different from Contracts or Skills…

What were they?