Chapter 51: The Witch (End)

Witches are people favored by the will of the world.

They are beautiful, intelligent, and naturally gifted with extraordinary power—able to command the elements, act freely and effortlessly, and possess extraordinary vitality. Simply destroying their bodies is not enough; to truly kill a witch, one must destroy both body and soul.

Even after becoming a wooden mannequin, the girl whose memories Everly was experiencing was still alive. Following her perspective, Everly continued to drift through the fragments of her memory.

The next morning, the babysitter arrived as usual to feed her and found the girl missing from the bed. In her place lay the wooden mannequin. Panicked, she lifted the pajama-clad figure from the bed and placed it on the floor, rummaged through the attic, and finally hurriedly left to call her employer, reporting that the “hostage” had escaped.

Through a mirror in the corner, Everly saw her current form—just over a meter tall, a wooden mannequin resembling the child mannequins often used in clothing stores of the last century. Blue eyes, red lips, a black wig on her head, thick false eyelashes glued over her eyes—eerily realistic, yet unmistakably inhuman.

The mannequin could not move. She was placed there, watching as her captor York argued with the babysitter, saw the babysitter attempt to threaten him with knowledge of witches, and witnessed York lift a short stool and smash her to death. When the warm blood of the babysitter splattered onto her, a surge of energy entered her body, and she felt her previously stiff mind sharpen slightly.

“Damn it… how did she escape… No, that witch can’t be allowed to remain, she must be dealt with immediately…”

York Kingsley, covered in blood, hastily disposed of the babysitter’s body and muttered to himself in the attic.

No… Stop! No! Mother!

No matter how the spirit trapped within the mannequin screamed, wailed, and roared, the wooden body remained motionless. It maintained its eerie smile, standing stiffly in the attic, watching York finish his business and leave in a hurry, watching the sun rise and set through the skylight, watching the light shift from bright to dim, and seeing the dust in the air slowly settle, gradually covering the entire mirror.

Time passed, though it was impossible to say how long. When the scene reappeared, York had transformed—now the richest man in the area, a gold-trimmed necklace around his neck. He held a cigar lazily, waved his hand, and casually sold the entire house, attic included, to another buyer.

What followed in memory was chaotic and fragmented.

As a child mannequin, she was sold, displayed in shop windows, stored in warehouses, sold to a school, used, and left idle… Over the long years, countless joys and sorrows played out around her. She witnessed familial love, friendship, and romance, but also jealousy, hatred, and death.

She discovered that she could draw strength from people’s negative emotions—just as birds sing and fish swim, it was an instinct she was born with.

Yes, of course—because she was a Cursed Witch. The more resentment there was, the stronger she became.

Yet she was trapped in this powerless body, forced to watch the descendants of her enemies feast on her mother’s flesh, enjoying wealth and fame.

So useless. So tragic.

The Cursed Witch suffered in her self-imposed torment, every moment, every second.

Until one night, a group quietly broke into the storage room where her body was kept. A girl with witch blood took out a spirit board and summoned the surrounding lost souls.

“Click.” On the third query into the air, the witch heard the sound of chains snapping. The binding force suddenly weakened, and she drew herself out of the wooden body, returning to “her.”

And so, from that day on, the wheels of fate that had been stalled for nearly a century began to turn once more…

…

“Ha… huff, huff…”

Everly pulled herself out of the memory fragment, breathing heavily.

The information had been so overwhelming that her head felt swollen. She had to put down the pendant, press her hands to her forehead, and sit in a nearby chair to process it all.

This memory explained all the anomalies she had encountered so far.

It turned out that the one possessing Kelly had never been the white witch Olivia, but rather the little girl almost entirely forgotten in historical records—the true “Cursed Witch,” Natalie: Olivia’s own daughter, Natalie Salaman, the same “N.S.” who had appeared during the spirit-summoning.

“Do you love your mother too?”

The words the girl had asked when Everly first confronted Kelly flashed in her mind. At the time, they had seemed random and incomplete, but now it was clear—the one speaking to her had actually been Natalie inhabiting Kelly.

Mother…

Everly lowered her head and unhooked the necklace she was wearing.

After leaving home and boarding at school, she had sewn a small pouch from cloth, placed her eyeball inside it, and worn it as a pendant around her neck. When Natalie asked that question, her gaze had not landed on Everly’s face, but on her chest—right where the eyeball pendant rested. Had she noticed the pendant?

What a perceptive witch.

Everly rested for a while, then tried picking up the pendant again, wanting to see what had happened after Natalie had possessed Kelly. The moment she touched the pendant, she fell once more into six-year-old Natalie’s body, and the memory she had just witnessed replayed itself.

Everly didn’t want to endure another memory shock—the fragment was far too oppressive and long, just witnessing it was suffocating. Before she got drawn in any deeper, she quickly dropped the pendant, slipped it back into the plastic bag, and leaned against the chair back to think. What exactly was this pendant? Why had Natalie given it to her?

And the most perplexing question of all—why had Natalie allowed the exorcists to burn her mother?

Natalie had loved her mother so deeply… hadn’t she?

After thinking for a long while without any clarity, Everly finally decided to contact Rebecca.

“You’re saying the real witch inside Kelly was Olivia’s daughter, Natalie? Impressive, you’ve collected so many clues in such a short time. Actually, Wester had also proposed the theory that the witch was Natalie, but her records were deliberately erased, and so much time has passed that she’s extremely hard to trace. We’ve only just been able to find her name,” Rebecca’s energetic voice said through the receiver.

Everly asked, “But I still don’t understand. If the witch really was Natalie, why did she impersonate her mother, Olivia, and lead the exorcists to burn her mother’s body and soul? Wouldn’t that prevent her mother from ever being revived?”

Rebecca thought for a moment and speculated, “Maybe she wanted her mother to finally rest in peace.”

“Ah?”

“Assuming the information you provided is correct, and Olivia really was a white witch, then when she was forced to curse and kill others, her soul would have suffered backlash, causing irreversible damage. After her death, her tongue was made into a lucky charm. That type of charm works by consuming the witch’s soul, too. With both effects combined, the soul remaining in Olivia’s body would have been extremely fragile. If the soul is too damaged, even reviving her with her enemies’ blood would only awaken a walking corpse.

Moreover, white witches are usually of high moral character; they view life and death lightly. Death is not something they fear—it’s a return to the embrace of Mother Nature. In contrast, forcing a white witch to revive through black witchcraft is what truly desecrates them.”

“…”

Everly didn’t know how to describe her feelings.

A mother loved her child, so she was willing to go against her nature and use her power to kill. A daughter loved her mother, and to avoid being a burden, she cursed herself, turning into a motionless wooden puppet. Decades later, when the daughter finally regained the ability to act, she had a choice: revive her mother but cause her suffering, or let her mother rest in peace. She resolutely chose the latter…

“Fate was really unfair to them… If only Olivia and her daughter had been born in your hometown.” After a long pause, Everly’s hoarse voice finally squeezed out the words.

“Yeah… so unfair.”

Rebecca let out a long sigh as well.

With the most pressing question answered, Everly calmed herself and began asking Rebecca about the pendant.

For certain reasons, she didn’t tell Rebecca its origin. She only said that she had acquired a mysterious pendant from somewhere, and that touching it allowed her to see a memory belonging to the pendant’s previous owner.

“Something like that exists? That’s incredible! Do you have a photo? Send it to me so I can see.”

“Wait a moment.”

Everly hung up the phone, lifted her hand, and took a photo of the pendant to send to Rebecca. At this point, her phone couldn’t handle calls and messaging at the same time, which was inconvenient.

After about ten minutes of waiting, Rebecca finally called back.

“Hello, young lady. I couldn’t figure out what that was at first, so I asked around. In the end, I found out—this droplet in your pendant might come from the ‘Fountain of Memory.’ As the name suggests, these droplets can store a living person’s memories.

Legends say that if a soul drinks it, they can retain the eternal memories contained in the water. Because the droplet is a product of the Underworld, it cannot touch anything in the living world, so it has to be stored in white crystal. But these are just guesses—the person I asked wasn’t entirely sure, since the Fountain of Memory is located in the Underworld; people in the living world only know the legend.”

The Fountain of Memory?

Everly had read widely, but there were too many myths and legends in the world for her to remember them all. After consulting Rebecca, she learned that the Fountain of Memory was the spring of Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory, language, and writing. It lay in the Underworld, opposite Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. Every soul arriving in the Underworld would encounter these two waters.

The memory fragments didn’t explain how Natalie had obtained the droplet. Perhaps after cursing herself, the little witch had somehow stepped into the Underworld.

But if it could really hold a living person’s memories, then Everly understood why Natalie had given it to her.

Thinking this, she took a deep breath, retrieved the pendant from its pouch, and held it in her palm. Following Rebecca’s advice, she focused her mind, silently willing the new memories she wanted to embed while letting the memories of another enter her brain.

She succeeded.

Half an hour later, all of Natalie’s memories within the pendant had been overwritten. The next time she touched the pendant, the image that appeared before her eyes was…