Chapter 47: Empty eyes.

Chapter 47

“Then you’ll die with the abomination,” the Mother snarled, her hand swept downward, a sharp, dismissive motion.

From her fingertips, the dark curls of smoke fell to the floorboards like liquid ink. The moment they touched the wood, they began to swim, lengthening into Shadows of snakes that hissed with a sound.

“Back up!” Clara hissed to Isabella as she scrambled toward the window. Isabella didn’t need to be told twice. She retreated until her shoulder blades hit the frame.

The shadow-snakes moved with a sickening intelligence, weaving around the fallen furniture, ignoring the quiet Sentinel in the corner to focus entirely on their targets.

“Clara, What do we do.” Isabella eyes were wide as the first of the shadows reached the edge of the bed.

“I have no spark, Isabella! Use your eyes!” Clara snapped, though her hands were frantically searching the floor for anything—a heavy book, a piece of iron—anything that could hold a physical ward.

One of the shadows reared up, its head widening into a flat, faceless cowl of rot and it lunged.

Isabella didn’t think; she swung the shard of wood she had with holding like a lifeline with every ounce of her adrenaline-fueled strength.

The wood slammed into the center of the shadow-snake. For a heartbeat, Isabella thought she’d won.

But there was no resistance, no satisfying thud of impact. The wood passed through the smoke like it was hitting water, and then, with a horrifying speed, the shadow began to climb.

It bled into the wood, turning the light wood a bruised, oily black. Isabella watched in horror as the shard in her hand dissolved into the same dark mist, the transformation racing toward her fingers.

“Drop it! Drop it now!” Clara lunged sideways, slamming her shoulder into Isabella to knock the wood from her hand.

The blackened shard hit the floor and vanished into the pool of shadows, becoming part of the growing swarm.

Isabella stared at her empty, shaking palm, her heart hammering against her ribs. “It… it just ate it. It changed it.”

“It’s not just magic, it’s a blight,” Clara rasped, her back now pressed against Isabella’s as the snakes began to circle them, trapping them against the window ledge.

“She’s not trying to kill us yet. she’s trying to bind us.” The Mother stepped forward, her robes whispering against the floorboards.

She watched the shadows coil around their ankles with detached pleasure. “You always were slow, Clara,” the Mother purred, her hidden gaze fixed on the girl.

“You know Magic doesn’t care about your little wooden sticks. but you still let the girl hold it.”

“Isabella,” Clara whispered, her voice low and urgent, barely audible over the hissing of the shadows.

“The window. If they touch us, we’re as good as dead. We won’t even be able to scream when she starts the harvest.”

Isabella looked at the gray, swirling abyss behind her, then at the powerful woman in front of her. The snakes were inches away now, the air around them smelling of a thousand-year-old grave.

“Jumping is a death sentence, Clara,” Isabella whispered, her eyes stinging as the cold from the shadows began to numb her shoeless feet. “The house is in the sky. We’ll just fall until we break.”

“Better to break on the ground than to be harvested by her,” Clara snapped, her voice trembling but hard.

She didn’t look back at her Mother. She couldn’t. “On three, Isabella. Don’t think. Just move.”

“How touching,” the Mother mocked, her pale hands rising again. The shadow-snakes coiled tighter, the front-runners now lashing at the hem of Isabella’s stolen coat.

“A bond formed in the face of death. But Clara, you forgot the most important lesson I taught you.”

The dark witch’s voice dropped to a jagged whisper. “There is no ’we’ for a witch. Only the one who survives.”

With a flick of her wrist, one of the shadow-snakes lunged, not at Isabella, but at Clara’s throat.

“Clara!” Isabella screamed. Instead of jumping, Isabella lunged forward, grabbing the flicking brass candlestick from the bedside table—the only thing left that hadn’t been touched by the blight.

She threw it with a frantic grunt of effort, aiming straight for the Mother’s hooded face. The Mother didn’t flinch. The brass fell to the floor before it could meet her but as it tumbled toward the floor, the heavy base struck the floorboards right where the shadow-snakes were thickest.

Surprisingly, the flame didn’t go out. The moment the fire touched the oily, liquid darkness of the blight—it ignited.

A high-pitched, unnatural shriek filled the room as the shadows caught fire.

“The wax!” Clara gasped, her eyes wide as the shadows recoiled, her mother hissing in agony. “It’s been blessed! I forgot I used those for the ritual—Isabella, the light is burning them!”

“You little pest,” the Mother hissed, the sweetness finally draining from her voice, the fire diminished with a flick of her wrist.

The shadows on the floor surged like a rising tide, flooding the room until only the bed remained as a dry island.

“I will enjoy watching the King scream when I send him your head in a box.” she hissed, the pool of shadows on the floorboards erupted.

The shadows lunged forward in a synchronized wave, striking before Isabella or Clara could even draw a breath to scream.

Isabella felt a shock of paralyzing cold as the first shadow wrapped around her ankle. It didn’t feel like smoke; it felt like a band of frozen iron tightening against her skin.

“Get off!” Isabella cried out, kicking desperately, but the more she fought, the faster the shadows climbed.

They spiraled up her calves, heavy and suffocating, pinning her legs together. She reached down to tear them away, but her fingers passed right through the mist, finding nothing to grip even as the cold began to leach the strength from her muscles.

Beside her, Clara was struggling just as violently. The shadows had already claimed her knees, winding around her rope and pulling her down.

“Mother, stop!” Clara gasped, her hands clawing at the air as she was forced to her knees.

Her face was pale, her white eyes wide with a terror that Isabella had never seen before. Isabella felt them reach her thighs, then her waist.

Every inch they covered turned numb, as if her body were being erased. She tried to lunge for the window one last time, but she couldn’t move her legs; she was pinned to the floorboards, a prisoner of the dark.

The two of them bodies pressed back against the window frame by the weight of the blight. The Mother stepped closer, her hooded face inches from Isabella’s.

A dark smile touched her lips and vanished as Isabella’s hand lashed out. Her fingers struck the Mother’s face, tearing the hood back.

The air vanished from the room as soon as the hood fell back. Isabella went rigid, her scream dying in her throat as she stared into the face of Clara’s mother.

The woman didn’t have eyes. Her eyelids were pulled wide, stretched over empty sockets that contained no bone, no muscle—only a swirling, infinite dark void.

Looking into them was like staring at the bottom of a well that reached into the core of the earth.

Isabella felt her heart stutter, her body going cold with a terror so primal it bypassed her brain and went straight to her marrow.

She was paralyzed, pinned to the wall not just by the shadows, but by the sheer, unnatural wrongness of the creature before her.

The Mother didn’t flinch at the loss of her hood. She leaned in even closer, the void where her eyes should be fixed squarely on Isabella’s face.

She inhaled deeply, a long, rattling sound that seemed to pull the very heat out of Isabella’s skin.

“This…” the Mother whispered as she reached out a long, skeletal finger, tracing the air just inches away from her empty eyes

“This was the handwork of the man your soul is currently tied to..”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep