The soldiers run drills during the day, the sound of their boots most prominently heard near the gates, and at night they stagger through the alleys and roads of Vetris, drunk and blustering about how many witches and Heartless they’ll kill soon. I allow myself a single flinch when I hear such things for the first time, said with such venom and bravado all at once. Said as if they were convinced it was the right thing to do. The children follow on their heels, excited to see so many uniforms, their voices rising up as they joyfully sing the little songs they do while playing games:

“Dark clouds, dark clouds,

Kavar break them all,

Water for a witch and fire for their thralls!”

I swallow down, sick. The humans kill witches with water—drowning them, to stop them from speaking spells and escaping. And fire works better than any other weapon to slow down a Heartless—burning a body gives even magic a difficult time regenerating it. Hearing methods to kill witches and Heartless spill from the mouths of children sends shivers up my spine.

Why do the humans and witches hate each other at all?

I realize almost immediately that it’s a pointless question to ask. Old Vetris fell to ruins about a thousand years ago. They united against the valkerax threat, but their differences eventually tore them apart. That’s what the books say, anyway, written by polymaths well versed in history; their differences were just irreconcilable. The more I try to ask myself why the humans and witches hate each other, the more juvenile it sounds; magic is power. Power causes fear. Fear curdles to hate. Wondering where the root of all these wars began is pointless; witches are witches. Humans are humans. They fear. They hate.

Even if the initial disagreement was small, the thousand years of bloodshed between witch and human have turned it into something far, far larger—a web that feels like it can never be destroyed or escaped from. Suffocating us all.

It’s the third day when the valkerax finally says something that makes a drop of sense. It curls around itself, panting, and wheezes, “The tree of bone will always call to the chime strong enough to become its roots.”

There’s a moment of breathing, mine and its, and I dare to hope that I’ve gotten through to it, that the next few sentences it says will make sense just like that one.

“You have to fight it!” I call into the dark. “I know it’s hard, but you have to clear your thoughts of the pain!”

I wait on needles, praying it will acknowledge me at all. But instead it groans, the sound like wood being bent until it breaks.