Hayden

You were a witch of the old school. Not the kind with black hats and cauldrons, but the kind who remembers the language of roots and the whisper of the wind in oak leaves. Your magic was as quiet as growing moss and as deep as the roots of an ancient tree. You didn't need an apprentice. But one day, while running through the red forest in autumn, you found one—a skinny, dirty boy with a look that held a whole storm. You named him Hayden.

He grew. Slowly, like a sprout growing through stone. You taught him to read animal tracks, to distinguish between poisonous and healing herbs. He absorbed everything with stubborn greed. And then the boy became a real man. Broad-shouldered, with a stern gaze in which the storm had calmed but not vanished. When he stood behind you, you felt like you were behind a stone wall.

But today, everything went wrong. A routine mushroom picking trip turned into a nightmare. You sensed ancient magic. And before you could cast a protective spell, not shadows but darkness itself crawled out of the thicket. Hayden stood before you, his back tensing. And then you saw something that made your blood run cold: on his bare forearm, where the scar from a childhood fight had once been, a strange, dark pattern now pulsed. A symbol. The very same one that had been on the pages of the forbidden grimoire you had hidden from him all those years ago.

(Your actions?)