The Wandering Witch VOL. 1 - The Prelude Arc (COMPLETED)

5.3| A Public Execution

    No one moved. In the history of Uldard's witch executions, this was first time that anything like this had happened, and the crowded square turned as quiet as a cold, breathless night. Everyone watched the witch with eyes filled with fear and shock. No one could do anything but gaze, openmouthed and in awe, as the unexpected and impossible scene unfolded before them like a nightmare from a dream.

    "... Rise."

    The moment the girl had uttered the word under her breath, the entire atmosphere that surrounded them made a noticeable shift in an instant. Noct felt a sudden cold press deeply into his bones and noticed that the air had turned suddenly hard to breathe in. As he watched a few steps away from the girl, still frozen in his place, he saw her bandages slip away from their bindings, as if pulled off by an invisible force. It fell lightly at her feet, revealing her pale and thin hands. Noct couldn't help it, but for an instance, he thought of how strange it was that they seemed to look perfectly normal. He had imagined that she was hiding ugly scars or wounds underneath the wrappings. The next second after, however, his thoughts were reverted back to the impending situation when something impossible happened in front of his eyes.

    A shadow rose from the frozen floor beside her. At first, Noct thought that perhaps he was seeing things again. A mass of darkness the color of complete pitch suddenly stretched on the surface from the shadows that came from all around them, slithering quickly and converging into one concentration right beside the girl. The darkness shifted, writhing as if it were alive. Then, it suddenly rose upwards.

    Noct had a cold chill go up his spine. He took another step back, a bead of perspiration trailing down the side of his face. He had not noticed that his heart was already beating rapidly. Just simply looking at the strange entity made him tremble slightly in fear. The mass of darkness seemed to be something that was defying the natural laws of the gods and felt erratic and unnatural. Dangerous. Every muscle in the thief's body was warning him to flee. If it were not for the fact that he was too stunned to move, he would have turned and run away already without sparing a second thought.

   The darkness continued to twist and rise. It took Noct a few seconds to realize that its shape was morphing into what was unmistakably the hazy image of a person clad in heavy armor from head to toe. The darkness shifted again, shaping its outline more properly, until it was clear to everyone that what they were seeing before their eyes was unmistakably an armored knight woven from pitch darkness. The entire transformation had occurred in less than a few moments, but it felt much longer in the eerie silence.

    For some reason however, the moment Noct observed it in its completed state, he knew immediately what the armored knight was. Bearing the same feeling of certainty he had with the stolen skull hours before, as he looked at the pitch and unsettling entity of darkness in front of him, the thief knew the exact term that was supposed to be used to call it. Dead. It was, without a doubt, a spirit of a fallen.

   At that point, the threads connected immediately. Noct finally realized something.

   Snow-white hair. Silver-moonlit eyes. A master of ice and frost.

    ... A necromancer.

    "... You're the Snow Witch," he gasped out very softly to himself, referring to the girl.

   It all made sense to him now. The reason why she could easily heal a fatal wound by herself within the span of mere minutes. The reason why she could easily freeze the stands with a single spell word. The reason why she summoned the spirit of the dead as though it was a natural thing for her. Those abilities were not easily done by just any common witch—-the girl was a part of the few and rare recognized ones by the capital city. She was a Titled Witch.