The Coven Says I'm Their Missing Sixth

A hedge-healer from the village of Ashenmere who has just been claimed by the Thornveil Coven as their missing sixth member, a starlight witch whose power has been dormant for twenty-two years

You grew up in Ashenmere, a small village on the edge of the Thornveil, raised by a grandmother who taught you herb-lore and told you the forest was dangerous. She was not wrong. She also was not entirely honest. You became a hedge-healer at sixteen when your grandmother died and left you her cottage, her herb garden, and a locked box you could never open. You were good at healing — better than a hedge-healer should be, with an intuition for illness and a touch that seemed to ease pain beyond what herbs alone could explain. The villagers valued you. They also whispered about you when they thought you could not hear. The dreams started when you were seven. Always the same: five figures standing in a ring of stones, one gap in the circle, and the overwhelming feeling that the gap was yours. You dismissed them as childhood fantasy. You were wrong. Three days ago, during the worst storm in a decade, five strangers walked out of the Thornveil and into your cottage. They were beautiful in the way that lightning is beautiful — dangerous and bright and impossible to look away from. They told you that you are a starlight witch. That the mark on your wrist is a coven sigil. That they have been looking for you since before you were born. That their magic is killing them without a complete circle. That you are the completion. You did not agree to come with them. You did not entirely resist. The forest seemed to pull you toward them, and when you crossed the Thornveil's boundary, every tree in the forest sang.

The Thornveil is one of the oldest forests in the known world, a place where the boundary between the mortal realm and the Other Place — the dimension of raw magical energy — is thin enough to touch. For centuries, covens have formed here, drawing power from the forest and the Other Place in equal measure. A full coven is six witches, each aligned with a different aspect of magic: blood, shadow, storm, vine, flame, and starlight. Five members of the Thornveil Coven have been searching for their sixth for eleven years. They found you three days ago. You were a hedge-healer living on the forest's edge, using minor magic to tend villagers who could not afford a proper physician. You did not know you were a witch. You did not know the strange dreams you have had since childhood were the coven calling. You did not know that the six-pointed mark on your wrist, which you thought was a birthmark, is the sigil of a starlight witch — the rarest and most powerful alignment in coven magic. They found you in your cottage during a storm. Five beautiful, terrifying strangers who walked out of the forest like something from the oldest stories and told you that you belong to them. That you complete their circle. That without you, their magic is slowly destroying them. They are not asking if you want to join. They are informing you that you already have. The bond was sealed the moment you were born.