Origin Witch - First Twitch

The Nerve-Restoration Fluid, Grade-C, weighed heavy in her lap—twelve hours of distillation, every scrap of spinal marrow, three drops of Anseic spring fluid.

Corinne sat against the timber bed stump, daylight just scratching through the east glass, and turned the vial once in her thumbs.

“No second tries,” she muttered to the quiet room. Her raspy voice sounded thin, almost fragile against the broad timber walls. She didn’t have another Drake spine. Garrett Thorne’s war-band had spent three days tracking that single Grade-D beast through the uncharted mud-swamps, losing two men to venomous swamp leeches before Corinne’s airborne acid bombs had cracked its throat open. If this batch failed, if her dilution ratios were off by half a milligram, or if Thane’s old notes were wrong about how human spinal pathways reacted to refined reptilian marrow, she’d be back to floating over mud for the rest of her life.

She pulled the cork stopper with her teeth. A smell burst out of the glass tube, not like the sharp lemon stink of Bitter-Grass or the sulfurous stench of her explosive charges. It smelled like crushed ice, fresh ozone, and the coppery tang of raw blood. Corinne tilted her head back and tipped the silver liquid straight down her throat.

For three seconds, nothing happened. The fluid slid down her gullet like cold cream. It sat in her stomach, heavy, neutral, entirely still. She let out a long breath, her fingers tightening around her Moonstone Carver’s leather hilt, wondering if the potion needed a thermal catalyst to activate. Then the fire hit. It didn’t start in her gut. It erupted directly inside her L3 vertebra, the exact spot where a nineteen-year-old’s German SUV had smashed her spine into wet gravel five years ago.

“AGH!”

The scream didn’t even make it past her lips. It died in her throat as her lungs seized, her ribs locking into a hard, rigid cage. Her torso whipped backward, slamming her shoulders onto the mattress. The world behind her spectacles went instantly, blindingly white. It wasn’t the dull, throbbing pain of a burn or the sharp sting of a cut. It was raw, naked electrical current being forced down dead, shriveled nerve channels that hadn’t seen a signal since she was fifteen years old. The potion was re-sheathing her spinal cord. Liquid fire poured down from her lower back, branching out into her hips like molten copper being forced through dry clay pipes. Corinne’s upper body thrashed against the straw. Her fingernails dug into the oak floorboards, ripping through the soft wood fiber, her knuckles turning white under the strain. She bit down hard on the lip of her linen collar, her teeth sinking into the coarse cloth to keep from biting her own tongue off. Tears streamed down her cheeks, washing clean tracks through the gray soot caking her skin.

Steelwool let out an alarmed, high-pitched keek-keek!, hopping out of its nest and fluttering its metallic gray wings frantically as it circled her head. Corinne couldn’t see the bird. She couldn’t see the room. Her lower body, the useless, dead flesh that had hung beneath her like two sacks of wet sand for five long years, began to jump. It wasn’t flight. Zephyr Float wasn’t active. Her mana bar sat untouched at 80/80. Her thighs twitched. Hard. A violent, involuntary spasm slammed her left knee upward into the air, her heel crashing down onto the floorboards with a heavy, wooden thud. A second later, her right quad tightened, the wasted muscle fibers bunching up under her dark linen tunic as a white-hot wave of agony shot straight down into her calf.

“Stop…” she wheezed through her teeth, her chest heaving as she fought for breath. “Stop… stop…”

The potion didn’t care about her begging. It was a Grade-C alchemical sledgehammer, tearing through five years of scar tissue, reconnecting severed neural pathways with the brute, uncompromising force of Drake marrow and pure Anseic ether. Every single nerve ending below her waist felt like it was being scorched with a hot iron, then scrubbed with coarse wire, then doused in vinegar. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. An hour. The sun climbed higher outside the glass balcony doors, painting the third-floor bedroom in blinding, golden light. Corinne lay on her side in a puddle of her own cold sweat, her tunic soaked through, her black hair plastered across her forehead in wet, messy clumps. Her breathing came in ragged, wheezing hitches, her mouth tasting of blood where her inner cheek had snagged against a tooth during the worst of the spasms. The white-hot fire in her spine was fading, cooling down into a deep, heavy, throbbing ache that pulsed in sync with her heart. She lay motionless, her arms limp on the damp floorboards, her fingers twitching with exhaustion. The room was dead quiet, save for the rhythmic plip-plip-plip of her internal water tap running down in the second-floor laboratory.

Corinne stared at her feet. They lay flat on the timber, five inches apart. The cotton hem of her dark dress was bunched up around her shins, exposing pale, thin skin marbled with faint blue veins. She focused her mind. Not on her mana. Not on Zephyr Float. She didn’t call on the leaf-mark on her hand, nor did she reach for the cool, weightless air of her talent. She simply looked at the big toe of her left foot. Move, she told it. Five years of hospital rooms. Five years of doctors shaking their heads behind clipboards. Five years of staring at a blinking red light on a sixty-story tower while her aunt spent her insurance money on a pickup truck. Move.

Her left big toe jerked. It wasn’t a phantom twitch. It wasn’t an involuntary spasm caused by dying nerve endings. The toe curled downward, pressing firm against the rough grain of the oak floorboard, leaving a tiny, clear indentation in the dust before springing back up. Corinne stared at her foot. She didn’t move her eyes. She didn’t blink. She focused on her right foot. She commanded the ankle to flex. The right foot tilted two inches to the side, her heel dragging across the wood with a clear, dry scrape. Pain shot up her calf, sharp, real, and glorious. A sound tore out of Corinne’s chest. It wasn’t a triumphant cry. It was a ragged, wet gasp that turned into a sudden, shuddering sob as she pulled her arm over her face. She lay flat on her side in the dust, her shoulders shaking, tears pouring down her cheeks and soaking into the dirty linen of her tunic. She could feel the floor. It was cold. It was hard. The oak grain was rough against the heel of her left foot, and the morning draft blowing under the glass balcony door felt icy against her bare toes.

Steelwool hopped down from the bookshelf, landing lightly on her hip. The owl chick let out a low, vibrating purr, its round honey-colored eyes fixed on her face as it tucked its spiky gray head beneath her chin. Corinne reached up with a trembling, soot-stained hand, her fingers closing gently around the bird’s soft, dense body.

“I can feel the wood,” she whispered, her voice cracking, barely audible over the wind rustling the high canopy outside. “I can feel the damn wood.”

She didn’t try to stand. She knew her legs were still wasted, her muscles thin and weak from years of disuse. It would take weeks of physical training, more potions, and careful rehabilitation before she could hold her own weight without floating. But the wire was connected. The bridge was built. She lay there on her side until the sun reached the middle of the sky, her left foot resting solid against the timber floorboards, listening to the birds singing in the high trees of The Spire.

Sun-Tae’s knee exploded against the jagged granite and the iron-bound box dropped into the mud. He scrabbled after it on hands and knees, fingers closing around the wet wood, pulling it against his ribs like a shield.

“My cores,” he rasped. His voice was a dry, wheezing rattle. “My sanctuary. I am the chosen. I am the holy.”

The mud-hills of the Sector 666 Southern Ridge stank of burned oak, stale cabbage, and wet dog. Above the shattered granite, Corinne hovered twenty feet up on her Zephyr Float, gliding through the gray afternoon mist. Her dark gray linen tunic was clean, though a streak of dried mud still clung to the hem. Her black frames sat snug against her nose, painting pale blue diagnostic overlays across the ruined landscape below.

Down in the ravine lay what was left of the Heavenly Peace Sanctuary. Garrett Thorne’s war-band and Marnell’s southern squad had done a thorough job. The oak gates Sun-Tae had locked against two hundred dying outcasts during the Ether Tide were now splintered charcoal, hanging off twisted iron hinges. The battlements had been levered apart by Thorne’s iron pikes, their granite blocks scattered like discarded toy bricks. The stolen wood piles were gone, hauled away by Jasper Finch’s trade teams to cover the debts Sun-Tae had racked up.

Corinne wasn’t looking at the fortress. Her eyes were fixed on a narrow creek bed half a mile south, where a faint flickering red aura moved through the scrub pine. The spectacles read him out for her.

Saint Sun-Tae, Level 4. Severe dehydration. Infected crossbow wound, right shoulder. Starving. Carrying one locked burlap chest of stolen monster cores.

The words hung in her vision in tidy blue script, the same system ticker that had once labeled him a holy man worth following. Corinne had watched two hundred die behind the wall he’d locked. She knew exactly what the label was worth now.

He was hauling himself through the gray mud, his spotless white shirt ruined, shredded by thorn bushes, black with soot, soaked dark at the right collarbone where one of Elodie’s bolts had grazed him. His clean-shaven face was thin, hollowed, crusted with dried dirt. Under one arm he clutched the central core treasury he’d taken from the two hundred outcasts he’d left to melt in the purple rain.

A quiet shadow fell across the mud six feet ahead of his face.

Sun-Tae froze. He looked up slow, bloodshot eyes squinting through matted hair.

Hovering three feet above the gray rocks was a girl in a dark gray tunic. Her dead legs hung beneath her at their loose, slack angle, bare toes dangling inches above the mud. Her black hair was pulled back into a rough ponytail. Behind the frames her dark eyes were cold, flat, devoid of warmth.

Beside her shoulder, a steel-feathered owl chick perched on a broad oak bough, honey-colored eyes watching him with birdlike curiosity.

“Corinne,” Sun-Tae whispered, dry lips trembling as terror washed over his dirty face. “The Witch of The Spire.”

Corinne gave him no answer. She stayed suspended, her upper body still, hands resting calm in her tunic pockets.

Sun-Tae scrambled back, heels digging into the mud, the stolen box clutched to his chest. “Listen to me, sister! Garrett Thorne and Marnell are thugs. Murderers. They destroyed my sanctuary out of jealousy for our peace!”

He held the iron-bound box up toward her.

“Look! Look what I saved! Forty Grade-E cores. Three pure water crystals. Take them, Corinne. All of it. We can partner up. You have the potions, I have the spiritual leadership. We rebuild Sector 666 together. A real family.”

Corinne looked at the box. Then at his face.

“Two hundred people, Sun-Tae,” she said. Her raspy voice carried clear over the quiet wind.

“What?” He blinked, mouth half open.

“Two hundred people stood outside your gate during the tide,” Corinne said. Her spectacles threw back the dull gray sky. “Zhao Dulai gave you his sister’s blanket. Lin Feng gave you his iron nails. You took their timber through the wall slot, locked the latch, and watched them dissolve in the purple water.”

Sun-Tae’s face twisted into an ugly scowl. “That was necessity! They were dead weight. Weaklings. They lacked the vision to survive Kaelum. Open that gate and my Ward Engine ran dry in four hours. I saved the fifty who mattered. I made the hard choice.”

He spat a glob of bloody phlegm onto the granite beside her dangling toes.

“You’re no different than me, Mercer! You sit up in your high tower charging sixty wood for a ten-milliliter vial of water. You let thousands die while you hoard logs. A leech. A parasite. At least I gave them hope before they died.”

Corinne listened until his voice broke into a dry coughing fit. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t get angry. She didn’t deliver a speech about justice.

“You gave them hope,” she said flatly. “And then you took their wood.”

She reached into her Pouch of Preservation and pulled out a round, dark-yellow glass throw-vial. Through her Spectacles of Discernment the blue text box floated over the glass.

Grade-E Offense Potion: Paralytic Slowness Decoction. Impact volatile. On shatter, releases a four-meter localized paralytic mist. Inflicts one hundred percent Neural Drag, stripping Agility to zero for thirty minutes. Tastes of boiled earthworms and swamp bile.

Sun-Tae’s eyes went wide at the yellow vial in her hand. “What is that? What are you doing? Corinne, I offered you forty cores. Half my treasury. YOU CAN’T DO THIS.”

Corinne leaned forward in mid-air, thumb popping the cork. “I don’t need your cores, Sun-Tae,” she said, quiet and unhurried. “I already own the market.”

She let go. The round yellow tube dropped three feet and shattered against the granite right between his knees.

The arrow struck with a wet thud.

A thick, sulfurous yellow-green mist erupted out, sticking to his wet shirt, his dirty skin, his open wound. Sun-Tae gasped, pulling the yellow smoke deep before he could cover his mouth.

His body went rigid at once. His arms froze mid-air still shaped around the box, fingers unable to flex. His legs went dead, heavy, stiff as stone. His jaw locked into a wide terrified square, tongue paralyzed against the roof of his mouth, leaving only a faint wet ghhh-ghhh from the back of his throat. Agility: zero.

He sat backed against the cold boulder, motionless, bloodshot eyes wide with horror, staring up at her.

Corinne didn’t draw her Moonstone Carver. She didn’t cut his throat. She didn’t drop a flame vial. She reached down, took the iron-bound core box from his frozen lap, and slid it into her Pouch of Preservation. Then she adjusted her spectacles, turned her torso in mid-air, and pushed off the gray rock, rising thirty feet into the high sky.

Below her, in the quiet ravine of the Southern Ridge, the gray afternoon fog was beginning to roll down from the peaks. A low howl echoed from the thickets two hundred yards off. A pack of three hungry Timber Wolves, drawn by the fresh blood from Sun-Tae’s infected shoulder. They came out of the scrub pine, green eyes glowing in the gloom, black lips curling over yellow teeth as they sniffed the cold wind.

They drifted toward the motionless figure against the boulder.

Sun-Tae couldn’t run. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t raise his hands to guard his throat. He could only sit there, eyes fixed on the white-clad figure floating higher into the clouds, helpless as the dark shapes closed around his feet.

Corinne didn’t look back. She glided through the cool afternoon sky, Steelwool riding her shoulder, wind blowing her dark hair back from her face. The ruined walls of the Heavenly Peace Sanctuary vanished under the gray clouds behind her.

She came down on the second-floor workbench rather than the balcony, set the iron-bound chest on the stone, and flipped the lid. Forty Grade-E cores. Three water crystals. She counted them into her ledger, one by one, until the tally matched the number Sun-Tae had bragged about, then locked the chest in the vault beside the rest of the day’s haul. The wolves could keep the rest of him. She pulled her spectacles off, rubbed the bridge of her nose, and reached for the next vial on the rack.

— Origin Witch —