She stood. The air grew heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and wet clay—the smell of creation being unmade and remade.
Inside, Seraphina Blackwood, the High Witch of the Eastern Circle, adjusted the obsidian choker at her throat. It pulsed with a low, amber light. Power. Authority. The kind that bent the knee of governors and made senators forget their own names.
“Here are my terms,” she said, walking toward them. Each step echoed like a gavel. “First: The Eastern Coven assumes governance of all climate policy. No votes. No oversight. Our word is the final weather system. Second: Every nation dismantles its nuclear arsenal within one lunar cycle. Not because we fear them—but because we find them tasteless . Third: A tithe. Not gold. Not oil. The old growth forests you’ve been saving as ‘carbon offsets’? They become ours. To rewild. To rule. To remember.” Dominant Witches
As the delegation stumbled out into the suddenly silent night, Seraphina stood before her altar. The bones of saints, the feathers of extinct birds, a mirror that showed not her face but the face of every woman who had been drowned, hanged, or silenced.
She touched the mirror. “We remember,” she whispered. She stood
Seraphina glided to her throne—a throne carved from the petrified heart of a redwood she herself had raised from a seed a century ago. She sat, crossed one leg over the other, and let the silence expand until it hurt.
Graves swallowed. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. “And if we refuse?” It pulsed with a low, amber light
Seraphina flicked her wrist. The man’s mouth fused shut. Not with stitches or glue—with a simple, absolute cessation of function. His eyes bulged. His companions stepped back.