The Vision: The Good Witch
**
The shadow took him.
Not stone, not heat, not death.
Something else.
When Khalen opened his eyes, he was not Khalen.
He stood barefoot in a sunlit clearing, grass brushing his ankles, the air sharp with river mist. His hands were unburned, unbroken, whole. One gripped the handle of a cart painted in wild colours, the other strummed lazy chords on a battered lute slung across his chest.
Children's laughter rang ahead. His own lips hummed a tune he did not remember learning. The notes left his throat bright and alive, and as he sang, images unfurled in the air, butterflies of light, a fox made of smoke bounding through the meadow. The illusions drew gasps from wide eyes.
Then she appeared.
A woman stood at the meadow's edge, robes damp from travel, hair caught back with a strip of cloth. Her hands were steady, her gaze sharper than the river. A healer, water affinity, he knew without being told. She cradled the wrist of a child who clung to her skirts, the girl's face drawn tight with worry.
The witch smiled. A small, tired smile that made the world softer.
"It is all right," she murmured. "I am a witch, and I am going to fix your mother."
The child's fear melted. She reached out, trusting, and the witch took her hand. Together they hurried toward a hut beyond the trees.
The Busker felt his chest ache.
He did not know why. He had never seen this place, never met this woman, yet when she glanced back, irritation flashing at his noisy cart, his heart thumped as if she had always been there.
His fingers found another chord, nervous and playful.
She rolled her eyes.
The child giggled.
He followed.
**
The Vision: The Witch
**
Light returned as waterlight, ripples of blue and silver across the walls of a hut no larger than a cart. Her hands were not burned or stained with soot. They smelled of mint and wild sage, marked with green from poultice work. A satchel dragged at her shoulder, heavy with herbs, bandages, and glass vials that caught the dim in faint flashes.
A girl stood in the doorway, barefoot in the mud, fists full of weeds she had been gathering. Her lip trembled, but her eyes did not waver.
"My mother," she whispered. "She cannot breathe. She said it was only a cough, but…" Her voice cracked. "My father has been gone three days."
The Witch's heart tightened.
The truth sat in the girl's pallor, in the fever shimmer at the edges of her eyes. The father was likely gone, or worse. The words that left the Witch's mouth were firm, warm, absolute.
"It is all right. I am a witch, and I am going to fix your mother."
Relief broke the girl's shoulders loose. She dropped the weeds and seized the Witch's hand. They ran across the clearing, mud spattering their legs.
Inside the hut, a woman laboured in pain, belly swollen, skin ashen. The Witch knelt without hesitation and laid her palms against sweat-slick skin. Breath pooled between her fingers like cold water drawn from a hidden spring. The air filled with rosemary and iron.
Pain ebbed. Breathing eased. The unborn child shifted, no longer drowning, alive and stubborn.
The girl stared, wide-eyed. She had never seen magic, not like this. To her it was not sorcery. It was salvation.
The Witch stayed.
Days became weeks. She cleared the mother's lungs. She taught the girl to brew herbs, taught neighbours to draw water clean from the river. When the father returned, wounded and missing a leg but alive thanks to strangers who had carried him from the wilds, the Witch bound him a Breath-hardened wooden limb. Strong enough to walk. Strong enough to hold his child.
The family embraced, all three tangled in tears and laughter.
The Witch watched, quiet, her own chest aching in a way she could not name.
People came. One by one, then in dozens. To be healed. To learn. To live near the woman who turned pain into hope.
A settlement sprouted like shoots around the hut. Smoke from cooking fires curled into the sky. Songs drifted in the evenings. Children ran barefoot between the trees, calling her name as if she were kin.
For a year, she stayed.
Then, one morning, as mist rose off the river, music echoed down the road.
A cart creaked into view, painted every colour of the sky, pulled by four shardlings in collars that glittered with Breath. On the driver's bench lounged a man draped in patchwork silks, hair wild, grin wider still. His lute twanged, and with every note, visions leapt into the air, birds of light, rivers of gold, stories you could almost step into if you dared.
Children shrieked in delight.
The Witch froze where she stood, ladle dripping broth back into the pot.
The Busker had arrived.
Something in the world tilted, as if a soul had been waiting for this meeting without knowing it.
**
The Vision: The Busker's Arrival
**
The cart rattled into the square like it belonged to every road it had ever touched. Pots clanged from its sides. Ribbons fluttered in every shade. The shardlings shook their collars and scattered sparks like fireflies.
The man atop the bench struck a sharp chord and leapt to his feet, balancing on the rim as if gravity had misplaced him. His voice carried without effort, bright as brass.
"Good people of…" He paused, squinting theatrically. "Hm. This place has no name, does it? All the better. Today, you are the City of Song."
Gasps, laughter, shouts. Children swarmed. The air bent around his notes. A painted bird split from the melody and swooped overhead, shedding feathers of light.
The Witch wiped her hands on her apron, jaw tight.
"City of Song," she muttered. "Tomorrow it will be a midden heap when he is gone."
She stepped forward and crossed her arms. "This is no place for tricks."
The Busker bowed, silk sleeves sweeping dust. "No trick, my lady, only truth revealed by music. A place without a name is an invitation. I am merely the messenger."
Her eyes narrowed. "Messenger. What do you bring?"
He grinned, all teeth. "A little laughter, a little forgetting. Perhaps even a little hope. Do not tell me you have never wished your herbs could dance."
With a flick of his wrist, the bundle of mint drying on the rafters spun up and burst into glowing butterflies. Children squealed and chased them, clapping through harmless light.
The Witch snapped her fingers. The butterflies melted into water and fell neatly into a bucket by the well.
The Busker's grin widened. "Ah. A fellow artist."
"I am a healer," she said. "Which means I do not lie to children."
"They know it is a lie," he replied, gentler now. "That is why they love it. A dream is sweeter when you know it is borrowed."
Her retort stalled.
The children were not laughing at him. They were laughing with him, as if he had given them permission to be lighter.
She exhaled through her nose. "Your cart blocks the well."
"Then I will fetch your buckets myself," he said cheerfully, vaulting down.
He took the rope, whistled a note, and the water rose shimmering, with the image of fish leaping in its wake.
The Witch rolled her eyes skyward.
The girl she had saved months ago tugged her sleeve and whispered, "He makes it feel safe."
The Witch went still.
She turned back to find the Busker watching her, head tilted, something unreadable behind the grin.
**
The Vision: Rivalry and Roots
**
By the next morning, he had woven himself into the village.
The Witch rose early, as always, to grind herbs and check on the mother she had healed. When she opened the hut's door, the square was already alive with noise.
The Busker stood at the centre, children clinging to his cart as he played. He was not conjuring castles in the air. He was leading them in hauling water, singing each pull into rhythm until the buckets sloshed overfull.
"They are working," one of the mothers whispered. "Smiling while they work."
The Witch scowled. "Smiling is not the same as working."
She stormed across the square and planted herself between him and the well. "You cannot keep distracting them. Some tasks require seriousness."
The Busker bowed and struck a lazy chord. "And yet the buckets are filled before you finished your herbs. Tell me, Witch, is joy so dangerous?"
The children tittered.
The Witch flushed. "Dangerous, no. Temporary." She pressed a finger to his chest. "When you leave, the songs will fade. I will be the one left to mend the hurt."
For the first time, his grin faltered, only a flicker.
"Then mend me too," he said softly, almost earnest. "If I leave."
Her throat tightened. She turned away before the children could see her falter.
Later, when a fever took a farmer's boy, the Busker was already there, fetching cool cloths while she worked. He sang low at the bedside, a tune that calmed the child's breathing. The notes glowed faintly blue until the fever broke.
The Witch met his eyes across the cot. For a moment, annoyance thinned into something else.
That night, the settlement feasted on what it had. The Busker played beside the fire, laughter rising, stories spilling like wine. The Witch sat at the edge of the circle, arms folded, but her lips betrayed her when she thought no one was watching.
When the Busker saw, he did not gloat. He only played softer, as though he had earned something fragile.
**
The Vision: The Night of Vows
**
Weeks stretched, and the Witch's resistance frayed.
The Busker stayed, not as guest, not as thief of attention, but as part of the settlement's rhythm. When the men split stone for new homes, he sang until hammer and pick became their own song. When the women kneaded bread, his chords fell in line with their hands, turning sweat into laughter.
He did not heal. That was her realm. But when she worked, he was there, steady and quiet, distracting the sick with gentle illusions so her hands could do their work without fear making it worse.
The Witch still scolded him for noise and nonsense.
Yet at night, when the day's labour was done, she sometimes found herself listening for his chords beneath the crickets, waiting for the way he always closed with a minor note, wistful and half empty.
One evening, she found him alone by the river. The shardlings slept in their collars, the cart half-lit by moonlight. His lute lay across his knees, silent for once.
"You are quiet," she said, surprising herself.
"Even a song runs out of notes," he murmured. "Sometimes you wait for the next verse."
She sank beside him before she could think better of it. "And if it never comes?"
He smiled faintly, eyes on the water. "Then I play anyway."
They sat, listening to the river's low Breath hum through the roots.
It was not the elders who saw the change first.
It was the girl, the one who had first taken the Witch's hand. She giggled one morning as the Witch scolded him over breakfast.
"You sound like you are already married."
The Witch froze, heat rushing to her face.
The Busker only grinned wider.
That night, he played not for the village, but for her alone. Notes spun into ribbons of light that wove a dome of stars above them, each chord pulling constellations down into reach.
When he finished, he set the lute aside, stood barefoot in the dust, and bowed.
"Marry me," he said.
No preamble. No performance.
Only the words.
She laughed, sharp and disbelieving. "You are mad."
"Mad enough," he replied. "This world ends every day. Let us not waste the night."
Her heart hammered. She thought of the family she had saved. Of the settlement grown from a single hut. Of the man who had made her burden lighter, even when she hated him for it.
She should have refused.
She knew it.
She did not.
Under the woven canopy of conjured stars, she took his hand.
That night, they were wed. No priest, no witness but the constellations, Breath woven into vows, music and water pressed into the soil.
The village woke to find them already bound, laughter spilling like dawn.
For a time, it felt like joy could last forever.
**
The Vision: Years of Joy
**
Seasons turned, and the village grew.
Where once there had been a single hut, now there were halls of woven root and crystal-veined timber. Their walls pulsed faintly at night, glowing with stored Breath like lanterns that never needed tending.
The Witch kept bodies whole.
The Busker kept spirits from collapsing.
Together they became more than two people. They became the spine of something new.
When the Witch laid her first child in his arms, their daughter cried out with a wail that sent Breath rippling through the rafters. The sound rang like a bell and echoed into the soil. The village erupted, not because the baby was special, but because she proved joy could take root in a world that had tried to kill it.
The Busker sang until his voice broke. Colour unfurled across the sky in ribbons. The Witch cradled the child, and some swore the stars bent lower to look.
With each year the people grew stronger, not only from healing or illusion, but from the way Breath itself seemed to flow more freely when hope had somewhere to live.
Hunters returned with beasts twice their size. Stone moved under hands that should have failed. Children sketched crude glyphs in the dirt and laughed when sparks bloomed into flowers of light.
The settlement swelled into a town, drawn by rumour and the simple fact that pain did not feel like the only truth here.
Sometimes the Witch stood at the edge with her daughter in her arms and felt a stillness she had n
ever known.
Once, she had wandered without end.
Now, with her family and her people, she almost believed she could stop.
Almost.
**
The Vision: The Golden Age
**
The town became a beacon.
From the wilds, people came not only to survive, but to belong. The Witch's healing and the Busker's songs were no longer curiosities, they were the fabric of life. Breath saturated the streets like air, and every man, woman, and child carried some trace of it in their step. They were stronger, faster, brighter than those who had once feared the dark.
At midsummer, they held the Hunter Trials. The square filled with drums, roasted grain and sweetroot, and the roar of a thousand voices. The young came forward, eager to claim their place. Their task was simple in design, impossible in the old days: wrestle a Breathling into submission.
They used no bows and no walls of fire. Only Breath, bare hands, and tempered crystal.
When the gates opened, the crowd fell silent.
A beast emerged, spined and snarling, its body hardened by the abyss. Once, such a creature could have slaughtered caravans. Here, it blinked against the sun, already wary.
The youth darted in faster than old eyes could follow. Skin lit in pulses of colour, blue for speed, red for strength, green for agility. The beast lunged, but one boy slipped beneath its claw as if weight had forgotten him. A girl leapt and twisted midair, her spear landing not to kill, but to cut shallow across its throat, enough to make it yield.
When the creature bowed its head, subdued, the crowd erupted. The trial was not to slay, but to master, to prove Breath made them more than prey.
Even the Breathlings seemed to know it now. They avoided the borders and slunk deeper into the wastes, where the town's light could not reach.
Yet the Trials were only one measure of their flourishing.
On rooftops, children shaped fire and water into games, flames turned to animals, streams coiling into hoops to leap through. In the markets, artisans crafted glass that sang when touched, instruments of crystal and bone that carried the Busker's music into every corner. Farmers coaxed crops from barren soil with a gesture, fields greening overnight as Breath danced through their veins.
They built libraries, not of paper, but of living murals. Glyphs carved into stone shimmered when traced, replaying histories in bursts of colour and sound. The youngest learned to read by calling forth the voices of their ancestors.
Festivals ran from dusk to dawn. At the Harvest of Breath, torches burned with hues the old world never knew, gold, violet, jade, each colour marking a family's affinity. Acrobats ran the rooftops and tossed lances while balancing on streams of condensed wind. Dancers spun with bare feet above glowing runes, each step igniting sparks that rose like fireflies.
Through it all, the Witch and the Busker moved among their people. She with hands that soothed fevers before they took root. He with songs that turned noise into harmony. Their daughter skipped at their side, her small hands glowing with a Breath that answered both healing and song, a sign of what the future might become.
No shadow crossed the borders. The world seemed to bend, not to destroy them, but to sing with them.
For a time, humanity had become the legend.
The Vision: Feast of Breath
The town no longer feared hunger.
Fields rolled where wasteland had been, each furrow shimmering under the sun. Farmers spread ground crystal dust across the soil, and the earth answered with impossible growth. Wheat rose higher than a man's shoulders, stalks veined with light. Orchards bloomed year-round, fruit warm to the touch and dripping nectar that shimmered in the dark. At night the crystalfarms shone like lanterns, proof that ruined land could be coaxed into bounty.
In the kitchens, ovens carved from stone pulsed with captured cores. A baker slid loaves into a hearth where a shattered Breathling heart still burned, its heat steady as any forge. The bread emerged with a crust that glowed faintly, traced with iridescent veins like lightning frozen in grain. The smell carried through the town, sharp and sweet. Children clutched loaves like treasure, laughing when the bread hummed before being torn open.
By the lake, nets glittered with scales. Fish, fat and bright, thrashed as though the water had learned light. Men and women hauled them ashore with nets etched in runes that glowed when wet. Families roasted the catch, steam rising with a tang of ozone. Elders said you could taste Breath in the bones, sharp enough to clear the mind, strong enough to quicken the blood.
Markets swelled with jars and vials of powdered Breath crystal. The Witch had shown how to refine the dust into spice. Blue flakes gave stew a richness that lingered. Red specks turned broth fiery, meat tasting as if kissed by flame. Green shimmer added sweetness even to roots pulled fresh from the ground.
Feasts became common, not desperate. Long tables stretched down the square, glowing loaves in woven baskets, fish glistening with crystal spice, fruit shining with inner light. The Busker's music threaded through laughter. The Witch's hands blessed child and elder with a steady touch.
They ate as if feasting on life itself.
In a way, they were.
The Vision: Festival of Breath
The square pulsed with light.
Lanterns carved from crystal ribs hung from beams, their glow weaving gold and violet across the crowd. Children darted through with loaves warm from crystal ovens, crusts humming when broken. Farmers stacked baskets of glowing fruit, leaves trembling with sparks as though still drinking sun. From the lake came barrels of breath fish, scales glimmering even in death, silver flashing with every turn.
Spice merchants laid out wares in sand-glass bowls, blue dust like ground sapphire, red powder sparking, green shimmer catching every eye. Women stirred the powders into stews that hissed as if alive, flavour rich enough to make elders stand straighter.
Then came the sound.
The low boom of horns carved from Breathling bones rolled across the square. All turned as the hunters arrived.
They did not sneak home in silence. They came like a river, boots striking stone, bodies streaked with ash and blood. They carried their kills on poles and frames, Breathlings bound and broken, twisted forms still smouldering with spent Breath. The strongest lay on a platform borne by six, head crowned with horn and crystal.
The square hushed.
The creature was set in the centre, corpse steaming as if unwilling to release its power. Elders stepped forward with knives of polished bone and cut free the glowing corecrystal from its chest. The stone pulsed hot and radiant, painting every face with shifting firelight.
Children cheered. The Busker's lute sprang to life, sharp chords cutting through the hush. The Witch raised a palm, the crystal's light refracting across her fingers, and blessed the feast to come.
The feast began.
Bread broke. Spiced fish steamed. Fruit spilled juice like molten jewels. Laughter and song lifted with drums, each beat echoing against ribs of old walls. Children clambered atop the slain beast and acted out mock hunts with wooden spears until their parents pulled them down, laughing.
When the night reached its height, a single hunter stepped forward, the one who had delivered the killing blow. His spear rose over the fire, its tip blackened from piercing the beast's heart. He plunged it into the ground.
The people roared, because the land had been fed, and homes would stand stronger for another season.
Above them, murals on old stone rippled as if in approval, painted figures raising arms to a crown of fire.
The Busker's song carried long into the dark, weaving the night into memory.
So long as the hunters returned, the people would not starve.
Festival of Breath: Through Her Eyes
The drums came first.
They boomed so hard in her chest that she giggled and pressed sticky fingers over her heart to see if it would bounce out. The air was sweet with smoke and crystal fruit, sparks rising from braziers where hunters dropped their trophies.
She clutched her mother's hand. The Witch's fingers glowed faintly blue from the herbs she had stirred, warmth humming through their clasp. Her father's laugh carried above the noise, crooked teeth flashing, his song weaving illusions across the square. Giants strode there in light, heroes of stories, but to her he was taller than any of them when he lifted her onto his shoulders. From up there, the whole world glittered.
Tables stretched beneath the trees, branches dripping with Breath lights. Bread cracked in her teeth like it still remembered fire. Fruit juice shimmered in her mouth like sunlight. Even the water tasted sharper than rain. She licked sweetness from her hands and squealed when tiny sparks clung to her skin, crawling like fireflies before they faded.
When the hunters came, the drums changed. Men and women strode through firelight with their kills, corecrystals bound in nets of bone, still thrumming with stolen life. The largest beast had been dragged whole, its carcass shining like obsidian where Breath had fused its wounds.
The crowd roared, not only for trophies, but for the survival they meant.
Her mother knelt and whispered in her ear, hair brushing her cheek and smelling of woodsmoke.
"Remember this," the Witch said. "Every bite you eat tonight is because someone was brave."
The girl's gaze caught on a shard the hunters set before the fire, larger than her chest, glowing with a pulse so strong it rattled her teeth. For a moment she thought it was another heart, a monster's heart, beating for her alone. She whimpered and pressed her face into her father's tunic. His hand patted her back, calloused and warm, his song steady as a promise.
The crowd's cheer swelled as the shard's glow leapt into the braziers and climbed into the branches until even the murals seemed to smile. In that blaze she thought, certain as breath, the world could never end.
Somewhere in the dark, something listened.
The Departures
It began the first time he left after the festival.
He told her with the same easy smile he used to calm crowds, but his eyes gave him away.
"There is something I must see to," he said, packing his cart with quick, practiced hands. "Nothing dangerous. Only work I put off too long."
She had always known there was more to him. There were nights when the music slowed, when his gaze drifted beyond the firelight, and the weight of unsung verses tugged at him. For a while she hoped he would tell her, that he would lean close in the quiet and share the secret roads he walked when the world thought him only a jester with a cart.
In the leaving she saw the truth. The secrets did not matter. What mattered was that he came back.
She made him promise it, fingers clutching his sleeve as tears streaked her face.
"Come home," she whispered each time. "No matter what, you come back to us."
Each time, he bent to her, kissed her brow, and swore he would. When he turned away, she saw the same look he wore when setting out to charm a hostile crowd, brightness stretched thin over worry.
Their daughter clung to his leg, sobbing, too young to understand why the music had to go away. The Witch gathered the child in her arms as he walked down the path, the girl's cries chasing him long after he vanished among the trees.
Weeks stretched. Sometimes two, sometimes three, once even four.
He always returned.
He came with gifts, fruit from distant orchards, bone charms carved by strangers, songs no one in their town had heard. He came with tired eyes and quick laughter, sweeping his family into his arms as if no absence had ever stood between them.
Three years passed like that.
The people grew used to the rhythm: the cart rattling out every few months, the Witch's watchful silence, the daughter waiting at the gate until sleep claimed her. His arrivals became festivals of their own, laughter and feasts springing up around his return.
The Witch learned not to ask. Love, she decided, was not measured by the roads he walked, but by the promise he kept.
Still, at night, when the town finally quieted, she sometimes felt the border of the dark move closer.
The Return
The cart rattled long before he appeared. The Witch heard it in the distance, wood creaking, shardlings snorting in their collars, wheels striking stone. Their daughter was the first to notice, head snapping up from play in the dust.
"Papa!" the girl shrieked, bare feet kicking up earth as she tore down the path. The Witch called after her, heart pounding, but the child was already gone, curls flying.
The cart rounded the bend, the Busker atop it, cloak ragged from rain, eyes shadowed by miles. When he saw the child racing toward him, his face broke into that unstoppable grin, bright and boyish. He leapt from the seat before the shardlings even slowed, arms wide, scooping her up mid-run with a spin that made her squeal and scatter sparks of Breath light.
"You have grown!" he laughed, kissing her cheeks until she wriggled free. "I was gone three weeks. You have grown three summers."
The Witch reached them slower, steady, relief hitting so hard it felt almost like anger. Her eyes stung, but she smiled anyway. She always smiled when he came back.
He saw it. He always saw it.
Without a word, he stepped close, pressed his forehead to hers, and breathed as if to anchor himself again. His tunic smelled of wet earth, smoke, and travel.
"You are home," she whispered. Her voice cracked despite herself.
"I promised," he murmured.
His arms folded around her, the child pressed between them, three heartbeats knocking together until they felt like one.
Neighbours gathered, calling out, laughing, offering food and drink. For a moment the square might as well have been empty. The Witch clung to his sleeve. The daughter squealed over the carved doll
he had brought from the road. The Busker kissed them both as if he had never left.
**