I spoke with the caretaker for a few moments, paid for my dinner, and told them to contact me if they needed more help before I left.

There was one last thing I could do to help though, so before I left, I entered Dusk’s realm and went to the village of smallfae.

“What is it?” their green androgynous pixie leader asked.

“I’d like to leave a few Bwbatch and Brownies here,” I said. “Start up a small village. Bwbatch warding magic would be useful to help keep them safe, and the brownies can help out in the kitchen and lay some charms too. I think it should pair well with the caretaker’s legacy.”

I might not be able to stay here and guard the kids forever, but I could leave them something to help keep them safer and happier. After all, what I’d told Selene wasn’t entirely wrong. There were good things out there too.

After a bit of discussion, a small faction of my village split off to go establish one of their own in the orphanage and care facility. With that done, Dusk and I deposited the Asomatous inside a nearby cemetery. She was able to keep it contained, true, but it took conscious effort on her part to keep it up, and I didn’t want to strain her.

I needed to get some cemetery wards in Dusk’s realm, to help keep spirits contained without straining her. Of course, they worked in part by reutilizing the power of death that always lingered within the graveyard, so unless we also wanted an actual cemetery inside of Dusk, that wasn’t possible.

There had been mentions of spiritual containment circles that could be built at third gate. Maybe I could work with that somehow?

Once it was deposited, I made my way to the nearest Spiritwatch office and alerted them to the completion of the contract, as well as the location of the Asomatous, where a death mage could return its energies to the world, not unlike laying a ghost to rest.

With that all out of the way, I went home to finally sleep.

And found a hag standing in front of the bakery.

Closer inspection and a sweep of my mana senses revealed that she wasn’t a hag at all, but rather a very, very old woman. A powerful witch, with lunar, abnegation, and life mana.

When I approached, she looked up at me and spoke. Her voice was dry and crackly, the very epitome of what a witch’s voice should be.

“You’re the boy and his bonded worldspirit, yes?”

Dusk, who had hidden behind my neck, peeked out to look at her.

“Yes,” I said. “You’re Kene’s grandmother?”

It was an educated guess. The mana types, relative power, and physical appearance were all right, but it was still a guess.

The witch eyed me for a moment before nodding.

“Aye, that I am. Color me impressed. Now we need to go.”

“Go where?” I asked guardedly.

“It’s Spirits-Walk,” she said, sounding rather annoyed at me. “The things that go bump in the night gain power this time of year. That includes the hag. It was quiet and compliant the first week, and we thought maybe it was dormant. But it’s launched its attack, and things are bad.”

“Dusk – that’s her name – has already done this once,” I said. “She can do it this time, but after that, there’s only one left.”

“I know the rules, boy,” she snapped. “Now. Are you going to come along? Or do I have to try something far riskier?”

“Coming,” I said, and the witch grabbed me by my arm. I clutched Dusk, and then the witch stepped into the shadows. Fifth gate mana swirled around us, and we shadowstepped.

I’d teleported before. Orykson had teleported me, and he’d used portals. Foxstep allowed me to teleport under my own power. Even moving in and out of Dusk’s realm was kind of portal magic.

But I’d never shadowstepped before. The world spun wildly, and I struggled to breathe. It wasn’t like being in thin air, but more like my mouth and nostrils had been completely filled with cement.

I desperately needed air, but I simply couldn’t get any.

A moment later, we emerged in the middle of a heavily forested area.

“Take a breath,” Kene’s grandmother said. I sucked in air.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Before I’d even finished, we plunged into the shadows again.

It took us three dives to appear in Kene’s village, and by the end, I think I was starting to understand why Orykson considered shadowstepping to be an inferior method to teleportation.

Not that I could do what she’d done, of course. Three steps to manage to get all the way to Kene’s village was impressive.

But I really wasn’t a fan of the feeling of my lungs being filled with concrete, and was immensely grateful that Foxstep didn’t do that.

Then the witch began to hobble over to the clinic where Kene lived, pulling me along. We entered the room, and I immediately saw why she’d pulled me along so quickly.

Kene lay sprawled out on the floor, as if he’d fainted but someone had moved him so he didn’t choke on his own spit and die. His tattoos were as arcane and symbological as I’d ever seen them, and his arms were completely shadowed, like they’d been dipped in ink. Instead of sharp fingers, he had full on claws.

Dusk let out a cry and leapt off of me, scurrying over to their body. She placed her hands on Kene and began to suck in the hag’s power

“I thought that they wouldn’t need a full gate spell to fend off the hag’s influences,” I said. “It looks like they need it pretty bloody badly.”

“They didn’t,” the witch said. “The hag is getting trickier. If Kene had been expecting it, they’d have been able to take the attack, but it happened while they were asleep, and after a full week of taking in power from this time of year.”

“What’s to stop it from doing it again?” I asked, and the witch pointed at Dusk.

“Your spirit, mostly. It takes the wind out of the hag’s sails quite hard. It went completely dormant for a month and a half last time. Even if it only lasts half as long, it will get us through this time of year, and things should stabilize.”

“And next year?” I asked.

The witch eyed me, then smiled mysteriously.

“I’ve faith you’ll find a solution.”

“You know,” I said.

“I’ve delved two of the three Sepulchers, though I only managed to get to the end of one,” she said. “The only reason I hadn’t told my grandchild is to prevent him from running off and getting killed.”

“I see,” I said. I didn’t agree with that decision, but I wasn’t going to argue too hard with it either. Maybe my opinion would change once we completed the first sepulcher.

“Why can Dusk do this?” I asked instead. “It was a property of the spatial key that she used to be, and she inherited it. But I don’t know of any magic that works that way. The best I can figure, it’s some sort of highly advanced abnegation, desolation, and creation magic. Isolate magic, breaking it down to its base components, then reconstruct it.”

“That’s mostly correct,” the witch said. A moment later, she spoke again, her voice stumbling a bit. “For your purposes, it’s correct. You may be a burgeoning witch, but you’re no enchanter. Not that, no no no. Not enchanter…”

“How do you know that?”

“You think I don’t investigate the boyfriend of my favorite grandchild?” she said, throwing back her head and laughing loudly. “I’ve seen your soul and back, child.”

I shivered, for the first time thinking about the fact that, with Kene unconscious, and Dusk tending to them, I was essentially alone with the witch.

I probably shouldn’t have let her shadowstep me out here on her word alone, but I was glad I had.

“What do you think?” I asked instead.

“Kene could do worse,” she said, sniffing. “You’re interesting, at the very least. You’ve got a landed and a wanderer guiding your growth, and are visited by an unchosen… And you’ve got a very nice cat.”

“I don’t have a cat,” I said, thinking about the gray tomcat that I’d seen around. It had been around less since I’d chosen Meadow as a mentor.

“Oh,” the witch said. “Are you sure?”

“I think so?” I said, and the witch nodded sagely, as if any of this made a lick of sense.

“Pasta salad?” the witch said, and I glanced down at her hand to see that she was extending a container filled with egg salad.

“That’s egg salad,” I said, and she looked down and blinked.

“So it is,” she said, withdrawing it into her ragged robes and pulling out a second container, this time full of what looked like squirming, winged eyeballs. She slurped one up like a noodle, then offered another to me.

“I’m okay,” I said, carefully keeping my face in a neutral mask.

The witch threw back her head and laughed, and the illusion around the container broke. Instead of winged eyeballs, it was grapes.

“That’s… still not pasta salad,” I said.

“No,” the witch said. “No it isn’t.”

She plopped another grape into her mouth and chewed. Instead of bothering to try and keep up with her very strange conversation, I focused on Kene and Dusk.

The shadows had crept down their arms, and now it was mostly just around their hands. It slowly continued to drain away.

“How did you manage to construct an astral plane?” the witch asked.

“A growth item spatial key from the Space King,” I said. “Then I fed it structure ore, and then a Lushloam seed.”

The witch ran a hand through her thick, matted hair.

“Hrmph,” she finally said. “I suppose. But by all the world’s coffee, boy, how did you know when to search for the seed?”

“I got it from small folk,” I said, and the witch huffed.

“Of course you did. That makes sense.”

Dusk made a sound like the smacking of a tree onto a roof and waddled away from Kene. I bent down and scooped her up, tucking her into my front pocket to allow her to sleep and process the power.

“What now?” I asked. The witch waved her hands and spinning circles of runes began to appear in the air, then sink into Kene’s flesh.

It was… complex. The spell seemed to be halfway to a ritual in and of itself, and it clearly took her a lot of effort to direct.

“I’m adding a few layers of extra protections onto Kene,” she explained. “They’re just temporary measures, but they should give a bit of an extra buffer.”

More glowing circles appeared around Kene’s fingers, then around their wrists, elbows, and shoulders.

“Why didn’t you do this before?” I asked, trying my very best to not sound accusatory.

“I had to barter with the Shining Spirits of Tianzhu to get this spell,” she said, not actually sounding upset at me. “Getting all the way off Mossford and across the mainland continent was quite the journey. Bartering with them took even more effort. I only was able to get the spell once I’d redone Kene’s tattoos.”

I was relatively sure that Tianzhu was one of the nations around Daocheng, but I could only guess what the Shining Spirits were.

She finished the spells, and then looked over at me.

“Do you want to return home?” she asked. “It’s early Phyday, you’ve still got your entire weekend before you.”

"No, I want to check on Kene," I said, shaking my head, and the witch snorted.