When the last of the creatures fell and their twisted bodies finally lay still upon the cold stone floors, the final castle of the Witch of the Void sank into a silence so complete that it almost felt like a living thing in its own right, pressing in from every corridor and archway as though the structure itself were holding its breath.
Farah stood alone in the aftermath of her cleansing, the echo of battle long faded, leaving behind only the faint sigh of wind that wandered through cracked windows and broken spires. It threaded its way through the hollow halls and up the spiral staircases, producing a low, mournful whistle that seemed less like a natural sound and more like a lament for what this place had once been, before it became a monument to corruption and decay.
Beyond the towering black walls stretched a landscape that could hardly be called living anymore. The forests surrounding the castle had withered into pale, skeletal imitations of what they had once been, their bark bleached and their branches brittle, as though the very memory of sap and leaf had been stolen from them. Farah knew, with the distant and patient understanding that came from her divine office, that it would take decades—perhaps even generations—before nature dared to creep back into this blighted territory. The soil would need to remember how to nurture, the winds how to carry seeds without fear, and the rain how to fall without bringing rot in its wake. Until then, there would be nothing but emptiness and the hollow murmur of air moving through ruins.
It was a shame, she reflected, and the thought lingered in her mind longer than she would have liked. As the one governed by Harvest, she had always loved the sounds that accompanied growth and abundance: the rustle of heavy grain bending in golden fields, the low murmur of insects weaving between tall stalks, the distant laughter of farmers who knew their work would feed their families through the winter.
Life had a music to it, one composed of countless small, ordinary noises that together formed something beautiful and reassuring. Here, however, that music had been silenced so thoroughly that even her divine senses could not detect its faintest echo.
Still, she had not come to this desolate place to mourn what was lost, nor to indulge in nostalgia for the gentle symphony of living things. There was work to be done, and it awaited her within the grand library that occupied the castle’s central tower, a chamber so vast that its ceiling disappeared into shadow despite the faint glow that radiated from Farah’s form. The shelves stretched upward in seemingly endless tiers, laden with books of every conceivable size and binding, arranged with a meticulousness that bordered on reverence. Dust lay thick in some corners, yet the organization of the collection itself was undeniable, as though the Witch had poured as much devotion into cataloguing her thoughts as she had into shaping her monstrosities.
Farah moved slowly along the rows, her fingers trailing lightly over cracked leather spines and embossed titles, selecting volumes with careful deliberation. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—the Witch had possessed a compulsive need to document everything. There were alchemical manuals filled with precise measurements and step-by-step instructions written in a steady, almost elegant hand, detailing concoctions that twisted flesh and spirit alike. There were research journals chronicling experiments in the creation of monsters, complete with annotations in the margins that ranged from clinical observations to furious outbursts directed at the so-called injustices of the world.
And then there were the diaries. Three hundred and seven of them, each numbered and dated, each brimming with venomous resentment toward the triumvirate. Among these, Farah had discovered an entire twelve-volume series bearing the spectacularly unsubtle title I Hate Those Stupid Bitches, a collection that, upon inspection, proved to contain page after page filled almost entirely with the word “hate,” written over and over in varying sizes and pressures, as though the act of inscribing it had been some cathartic ritual. Each book had been carefully numbered, as though the Witch feared losing track of her own fury.
There were many such works scattered throughout the shelves, though Farah had been in this library for months now and had grown adept at identifying which volumes held genuine information and which were little more than repositories for unfiltered rage. At a glance, she could distinguish the precise, tightly written tomes of research from the erratic scrawls of emotional indulgence. It was, she had to admit with some reluctant admiration, a shockingly well-organised archive for someone so thoroughly consumed by madness.
On more than one occasion, Farah had caught herself almost voicing praise for the Witch’s methodical habits, the way every shelf was labelled and every series kept intact, as though chaos had been confined strictly to the content rather than the structure. The thought always left a bitter taste in her mouth, because it highlighted a painful truth: such discipline and intelligence, if turned toward healing rather than destruction, could have transformed entire nations for the better. The same mind that had engineered abominations might have restored forests or cured plagues, had it chosen a different path.
Yet Farah was not a god of omniscience, and she could not peer into the origin of the Witch’s intent, nor unravel the precise moment when brilliance curdled into obsession. She could only judge the results laid bare before her. The ruined land, the obedient horrors, the endless pages of vitriol, and accept the simple, unyielding conclusion that the Witch was a mad god, and that madness had been allowed to flourish unchecked for far too long.
Farah let out a slow breath that stirred the thin layer of dust drifting in the lamplight glow of her aura, and with deliberate care she slid the book back into its proper place upon the shelf. The title, The Particularities of Space and All That, gleamed faintly in faded silver ink as her fingers lingered on the spine for just a moment longer than necessary, as though she were reluctant to fully part with it despite the fact that it had not told her anything particularly useful.
She had taken it down out of curiosity more than expectation, thinking of Umbra and the way she would sometimes speak about the stars with a distant look in her dark eyes, describing constellations and stellar phenomena with surprising fluency for someone who insisted that it was merely a hobbyist’s interest. There had always been something almost endearing about the way Umbra would shrug off her own knowledge, as though memorising the language of the heavens were no more significant than learning a handful of recipes.
Much of what Umbra had once explained had sounded so fantastical that Farah had struggled to reconcile it with her own understanding of creation, because apparently every tiny point of light scattered across the night sky carried with it layers upon layers of terminology, classifications, and strange behaviours that mortal scholars had painstakingly catalogued over centuries.
The Witch, it seemed, had also taken an interest in these matters, though her approach had been less poetic and more clinical. Unfortunately, the particular volume Farah had just finished contained little beyond dry observations and marginal notes that spiralled into tangents about gravity wells and stellar collapse. The only truly memorable revelation she had gained from it was the baffling fact that brown dwarves were not, in fact, brown at all, which struck her as such an unnecessary contradiction that she found herself frowning at the shelf as though it might provide an explanation. Why, she wondered with mild irritation, would anyone name something after a colour it did not possess?
The angel clicked her tongue softly at herself, the sound echoing faintly in the cavernous quiet of the library, chastising her own wandering thoughts. Idle curiosity would not bring her any closer to what she sought, and she could ill afford to become distracted by astronomical trivia when her purpose here was so much more urgent and personal. With a measured beat of her majestic wings, she lifted herself from the floor in a smooth ascent, drifting upward toward the next tier of shelves that circled the vast chamber like the rings of some great wooden coliseum. The movement stirred loose pages and sent faint currents of air spiralling outward, though the rest of the castle remained as still and unresponsive as a tomb.
Upon reaching the higher level, Farah began once more to scan the spines arranged before her, her eyes moving swiftly across titles etched in ink, gold leaf, and sometimes what looked disturbingly like dried blood. Before long she encountered yet another series that immediately made her expression flatten in weary recognition. It appeared to be hate-fiction of some sort, though this time it had been structured in the form of nursery rhymes, each slim volume bound in pastel covers that clashed grotesquely with the venom contained within. The verses, written in looping script, were filled with curses so foul that even reading them in silence made her uncomfortable, and the margins were decorated with childish drawings of stick figures and grotesque caricatures that bore an unsettling resemblance to the triumvirate. The juxtaposition of innocent form and malicious content left Farah feeling more unsettled than if the Witch had simply written another manifesto of rage.
She exhaled slowly and slid those books back into place as well, resisting the temptation to set them ablaze then and there. At this rate, she could not help but feel that it might take months, maybe even years, to unearth something of genuine value amid the clutter of bitterness and obsessive documentation. The sheer scale of the archive weighed upon her, and for a fleeting moment she felt the faintest tremor of doubt about whether she would find the answers she needed in time to accomplish her quest and reclaim the love that had been torn from her.
It was in the midst of that creeping discouragement that her gaze caught upon a section of shelving set slightly apart from the others, its placard carved neatly and without ornamentation. The label read, in clear and unambiguous script, “Instructions on Travelling to Other Worlds.”
Farah hovered there in silence, staring at the words as though they might rearrange themselves if she looked long enough, and a slow, dawning realization spread across her features. Perhaps, she thought with a mixture of exasperation and reluctant amusement, she should have explored the library more thoroughly before spending months wading through astronomical musings and vindictive nursery rhymes.