The Witch War is Over
They said the Witch War was over. A few days after the final prayer. The massive battles outside the castle walls had vanished. The distant cheers, the beacon fires flickering every night—they had quietly faded away.
"The enemy has retreated," an officer said.
"Thanks to the Saintess's prayer."
The priest clutched his cross and nodded. "God has brought the war to an end."
The people echoed his words. "The Saintess ended it." "She stopped the war with her prayer."
I bowed my head. It was I who had prayed. The mouth that uttered "Please end it," the eyes lifted to the sky—they were all mine. And that's why I had no desire to know exactly what had come after that end.
A little time passed, and the stories began to circulate.
"They say the earth split open in some places."
"A mountain collapsed, burying both armies at once."
The tales always ended the same way. "But we survived."
"Thanks to the Saintess."
Someone knelt and seized my hand. "Saintess Jan. My son... he's come back. Thanks to your prayer."
Another bit their lip and said, "My husband didn't return."
The words grew more specific. "Before, prayers saved children on the brink of death..."
"Now, even prayers can't save them."
The priest raised his voice each time. "God is perfect! The imperfection lies with those who offer the prayer."
With those words, eyes turned to me.
"She sacrificed others to save us."
"So is that child a saintess... or a witch?"
The whispers followed me through the cathedral, the corridors, the well, and the hearth. Mom stroked my back. "Jan, don't listen."
I nodded. The warnings to ignore it always came too late. Just hearing the word "prayer" made my stomach churn. Every time someone begged, "Please pray," another sentence rose unbidden in my mind.
'Who do you want to kill instead?'
It never passed my lips. Instead, I sealed them shut.
One day, a plague began spreading through the castle. Coughs. Fevers. Death within ten days.
"We won the war..."
"They said it was over..."
"Why is sickness striking now?"
The people pinned the blame in one direction. "If a prayer can end a war at once, surely it can stop a mere plague?"
The priest shouted from the pulpit. "Such talk is blasphemy! Do not doubt the Saintess's miracle!"
But a void had formed. Between "God is perfect" and "Then why is this happening?"
And there was one easy name to fill that void.
The Saintess.
We were seized the night after news spread that a few children had died from the contagion.
Bang!─ The door flew open. Boots clad in iron plate poured into the room.
"Saintess Jan, and her mother."
Soldiers who once averted their eyes now met mine. It was their hands—gripping axes and spears—that looked away.
"Arrest by command. In the name of God."
Mom gripped my hand tightly. "Jan."
"It's okay." I knew full well it wasn't. But I couldn't shake off her hand. "It's okay" held no power anymore.
At the end of the corridor, amid the soldiers, stood Matthias. His eyes brushed past me briefly.
"Saintess." His voice was very low. "Let's go."
There was no command, no persuasion, no comfort in his words. Just the acknowledgment that this was the only thing we could do here and now.
The trial ended swiftly. The priest declared, "Your prayer came from God. Yet plague spreads, the earth splits, and people die."
"A prayer from a perfect God could not be flawed."
He gripped his cross tightly. "Therefore, the fault lies in the tool that offered it. Your mouth."
I said nothing. Denial would require lies. Erasing everything I'd seen with my own eyes.
Bodies swept down the river. Soldiers buried in the valley below. The supply camp's flames. And Henri.
I kept my mouth shut. Silence sounded like confession.
"A witch," someone whispered.
"The witch who ended the war."
"Witches must be burned."
The verdict was as brief as a prayer. Burning at the stake. Me and the witch's mother.
Our bodies were hoisted onto the pyre. My back slammed against the rough wood. Ropes bound my wrists and ankles, tightening all at once.
My body jerked first. The coarse fibers scraped my skin, then tore into flesh on the second pull.
"Ugh..." Pain leaked out.
With each additional tug, I felt my flesh curling inward. Beside me, ropes wrapped Mom's arms too. Her pale skin quickly turned red.
"Jan." Mom twisted toward me. After coming to the castle, I'd called her "Mother" to seem less rustic, more fitting for a saintess. But now, the word circling my mouth was one.
Mom.
She looked at me. Even that movement drove the ropes deeper. A trickle of blood seeped from her wrist. The rope darkened as it drank it in.
"You're scared."
I nodded. "...Yeah... really scared."
Mom gave a bitter smile. Her eyes weren't smiling, but her lips curved slightly. "Of course. How could you not be?"
She forced her bound hand to brush the back of mine. Twitch. Even that tiny touch yanked my wrist rope too. The fibers gouged deeper, shredding flesh. Hot blood welled up, soaking into the rope.
"Sorry... it feels like this is all because of me..." The words tangled on their own.
Mom snorted. "In the castle, it was always 'Mother, I'm sorry'."
She chuckled softly. "Now that we're up here, your daughter voice finally comes out."
"We're in this mess—what does face or speech matter now?"
"Jan, listen."
Her voice lowered slightly. "You're not the one who's wrong."
"The war was wrong. The people were wrong... God was wrong."
I looked at her face. "God...?"
"Yeah. He says he'll save us if we pray, but just uses you."
"Those up there insisting it's good, God's will—they're the ones."
The lord, the priest, people forever calling for prayers and God.
"You just prayed as they told you."
Mom said, "The God who made prayer that way is wrong, not you for praying it."
She smiled faintly. "I think I can hate God a little now."
"That okay?"
I let out a disbelieving laugh-breath. "......Yeah, you can."
Mom muttered playfully. "Good, permission from my daughter. Now I can hate him guilt-free."
Below, the kindling creaked. The spark was being lit.
"Jan." Mom called again.
"Yeah."
"Do you want to live?"
I closed my eyes, then opened them. "......Not sure."
"I don't want to die, but when I try to say I want to live, faces keep coming to mind."
"Still..."
Mom said, "I want you to live."
"If I die in your place, it's a bargain."
"Mom..."
More blood trickled from her wrist. "Some died because of your prayers, sure."
Her voice trembled faintly. "But others lived because of them."
"People always talk about the worst pain. They see the dead beside them, but not the living."
Mom looked straight into my eyes. "I'll start by seeing the people you saved, not the ones who died because of you."
A heat built slowly in the center of my chest. I couldn't tell if it was the fire or her words.
"Am... I a good person?"
Mom didn't hesitate. "Of course. You're a good girl."
"So please, don't hate only yourself too much."
"That's Mom's last request."
Embers were shoved under the pyre. Short flames spat up, red glow spreading through the kindling gaps.
First came the smell of burning wood. Crackling logs, brief flame bursts. Then the stench of burning cloth. Sweat- and blood-soaked fabric boiling, sticking viscously to skin.
Heat rose from my soles. "Hot" no longer sufficed; the ankle ropes heated first. Smoke rose. Scorched fibers dug deeper into skin. Flesh swelled and cooked, the ropes embedding inward bit by bit.
"Ugh... urk...!" Sounds burst from my mouth unbidden. My throat quivered wildly.
Flames climbed past my feet, up my calves. I couldn't tell where fire ended and my flesh began. My whole body shook with agony.
Then, a scream tore from beside me.
────AAAAAAAAGH!!!
It was Mom's voice. Not the Mom I knew. A scream that wouldn't stop even if her throat ripped apart. Like a boiling pot exploding, or cracked glass shattering all at once. Too high, too long, endless.
Flames wrapped her legs. Cloth charred black first, then flesh cooked from brown to black. The acrid stench of roasting meat slammed into my nose. Burning oil and searing blood mingled into a sticky, horrific reek.
'────Mom…!'
I gasped, hot air scorching my lungs, triggering coughs. My mouth and throat burned madly.
Mom's scream cut off briefly, then resumed even higher. Not song or prayer—just a living body shrieking for death from unbearable pain.
'Scary.' Her scream alone terrified me.
Flames reached my waist. White robes ignited at once. The waist rope glowed, burrowing deeper into flesh. Blood oozed through gaps, drying instantly from heat only to burst anew.
Mom's screams mixed with mine. I couldn't tell who started first or whose was louder. Tears evaporated from the heat. Even closed eyes felt flames inside the lids.
Prayer circled my mouth, then shattered as my tongue burned.
A whisper in my head.
It sounded less like God's voice, more like the dying's final breaths tangled together.
"Pray, Jan. 'It's what you do best.' 'Who will you burn instead this time?'"
I gritted my teeth. "......No."
I hated prayer. Hated God. Hated those who spoke of Him, who begged for prayers. And yet, it was always I who prayed.
If blame had somewhere to go, it would always end with me.
Flames reached my chest. Each breath felt like inhaling a hot blade into my lungs.
Mom's screams grew lower. Short bursts, trembling in the air, then gone.
"Mom..." Amid lips parched and burning, I said, "I love you..."
Those words summoned no miracle, no disaster. They just scattered with the smoke.
My heart beat slowly. Twice. Three times. Then snapped somewhere.
Firelight seeped inside my eyelids, then slowly receded. Far away, I heard the word I'd called by the well as a child.
Mom.
Much later, I learned it. That the last word I'd called atop the fire wasn't "Mother," but "Mom."
The moment I thought that a small mercy, the scene became a lifelong punishment I could never escape.
Once the name "Saintess" was stripped away, all that remained was a daughter's voice holding her mother in the flames to the end.
That, they called a witch.
And then, all sounds extinguished at once. No darkness, no fire, no prayer.