He inhaled and kept walking. His strides grew longer, and before he knew it, he was at the end of the lane. He settled, releasing the breath he had been holding. He swore under his breath at of the sight before him.

Underneath the only streetlight stood a tall silhouette of a man.

He stepped back, but the footsteps behind him had returned. He turned his head ever so slightly to catch a glimpse of the person that walked behind him.

No one was there.

He looked back at the silhouette charging towards him. He still could not make out the figure for what it was.

He turned and dashed from the shape, only to find it had vanished, along with its footsteps.

He kept running back to where he came from. He could listen to the tavern’s loud chatter, and he smiled.

Perhaps they could offer him help?

He was about to turn towards the sandstone tavern when he saw a flash of white teeth behind a sinister smile.

He was met with a blanket of darkness and a blow to the head.

Gabriel Levin awoke in a cell. Trapped and confined with nothing to do except reminisce about his relationship with Dana Kore over and over again.

He might even get to know if she had been waiting for him in Hestgartia.

part one:

autumn

chapter one

bethan kore

at the first sight of orange leaves, the witches gathered.

Bethan knelt before the Trine, feeling like an absolute fraud, being the only witch in the temple without magic coursing through her veins, a mockery of the three goddesses before her.

Early explorers discovered only the head of the Three-Faced Goddess. Except Bethan Kore knew the head didn’t present three faces. Had the archaeologist dug a few metres farther, they would have revealed three bodies that matched the decapitated head. Two hundred years later, her sister dug further.

The Three-Faced Goddess stood tall with their chins tilted up. The sculptor must have been human, as they were the only ones who bore the time to carve statues this magnificent.

Dressed in white gowns, representing the Trine’s pure magic, every female witch in Malia worshipped the alabaster statue for autumn’s first full moon.

A choir of witches sang above them. Bethan tilted her head back to gaze at them, fresh-faced with not a care in the world. She recognised the teenagers’ blue uniforms, realising they were from Hadwicke’s, the all-girls college where Bethan and Dana were sent in their last year of high school at seventeen, as all witches were. Testing comprised the ability to conjure abnormal powers like Green or Blood Magic. Bethan had always thought testing for Blood Magic was useless, considering a line of Blood Witches hadn’t existed since the plague. The thought of testing positive for Blood Magic enticed her, since she’d been set apart from the other witches, rendering her unique.

She shrugged.