There are moments in life when we hear about something so terrible, it feels as if we’ve been punched in the stomach. That feeling—that sense of despair—is a witch’s greatest thrill; it is like the air she breathes.

Witches are made of the darkest shades of a hidden and invisible fabric that permeates the world. Like ghosts, most people can’t see them. However, they contain just a hint of the physical world too, and so they are sturdier and far more powerful than other magical beings. While they can’t walk through walls like ghosts can (they’re too solid), they can open doors and windows with a flick of the wrist, make small items float in the air. They control great multitudes of familiars—half-magical, half-real creatures just like them—who do their bidding.

Witches are not solid enough to kill, but they are excellent thieves. They’re known to steal and hoard anything they can get their hands on: jewelry right off of human necks, favorite mementos, socks, even the odd pet. They steal for the sake of taking what is ours and what we care about: to keep it for themselves, but most importantly to make us feel the loss of it. Most of all, witches steal the good things inside us. What’s inside us is the thing they want most. That’s where their curses come in.

To lay a curse, a witch must touch her victim, as if laying a scent. Her familiars do the rest: gathering the good things she means to pillage—memories, time, wisdom, and so on. Each witch treasures a different prize.

By stealing what is good in us, the witches leave voids behind. And humans full of voids lose all the things that matter: hope, connection, love. They lose even the vaguest whispers in their hearts that there is magic and beauty in the universe. By cursing as many victims as they can and stealing all the good, the witches hope to capture the world in a web of despair so thick that it reflects only the ugliness of their misshapen hearts. In such a world, their power will be boundless.

But witches do have their limits. They can float but not fly (though sometimes winged familiars can help). They cannot be two places at once, or disappear from one place and reappear in another. And most of all, because moonlight has hope in it, witches cannot tolerate it. It burns them. This means they choose only to travel the world and lay their curses at the dark moon, when the moon reflects no light at all.

What’s more, witches are not all-knowing or all-seeing, and they rely on their familiars as messengers and spies to find the things they seek.

This is how they’ve always found witch hunters. It is how they will find me.