12 The Witch's Apprentice Chapter 12

Bell froze a few steps away from the water’s edge.

She didn’t speak, but Thera noticed.

“You don’t have to go near it,” she said gently. “Not yet.”

Bell nodded, grateful. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. The river…” She shook her head. “It felt like it was alive.”

“It is,” Thera said, stepping beside her. “Everything here is. The water. The stones. The light.” Her tone grew quieter. “Even the lake itself.”

Bell’s breath hitched. “You mean the god?”

Thera gave her a sideways look, half-smiling, half-somber. “We don’t speak of that lightly. Not yet. You’ve just arrived. Let the land welcome you first before the lake begins asking questions.”

Bell glanced at the gently rippling surface. It looked calm. Innocent, even.

But she knew better.

Something lived in the dark beneath that stillness.

Something that had watched her long before she’d arrived.

Thera placed a hand lightly on her back. “Come on. I’ve got another lesson for you.”

Bell turned away from the water, still feeling its pull on her skin. But as she walked, the sounds of nets and laughter faded behind her, replaced by the soft chatter of witches brewing tinctures, and the rich, warm scent of drying herbs.

The lake could wait.

For now, there was more to learn.

Bell sat cross-legged in a ring of salt and crushed lavender buds, the scent rising warm and resinous around her like smoke from an invisible fire. Here the cave pressed close on all sides—its damp stone walls breathed with a low, ancient chill, and the silence was not empty, but alive. Somewhere deeper, water dripped in slow, irregular rhythms, like a ticking clock that had forgotten how to keep time.

Patches of lichen clung to the cavern walls, pulsing with a faint blue bioluminescence that cast shifting shadows across Bell’s cheeks and flickered in her eyes like distant lightning. In front of her, a single candle stood in a small iron holder—its wax green as moss, its flame eerily steady despite the cool gusts that slipped through the tunnel like sighs from something sleeping beneath the earth.

Thera knelt beside her, her presence steady and quiet, cloaked in layers of deep brown and violet cloth that smelled faintly of clove and old wood smoke. Her silver hair was braided back, revealing eyes that had seen more than they ever said aloud.

Thera had taken Bell to this alcove far from the rest of the camp with the purpose of secluding her from the others—claiming their influence would interfere with the magic she was about to show her.

“Today,” she murmured, her voice low and velvety, “you’re going to leave your body. Just a little.”

Bell shifted uneasily. “Is this… safe?”

Thera’s mouth curled in a knowing smile that did not quite reach her eyes. “It’s necessary. This is pathworking—a walk into your inner world. Your senses will turn inward. What you find there… well, it may be realer than this place.”

She placed a hand on Bell’s shoulder. It was warm, grounding, steady.

“Close your eyes,” she said. “Let my voice be your guide.”

Bell obeyed, though her heart still gave a flutter. In that darkness she felt as she had back when she first stepped into the boat—suspended on the edge of something chilling. This time though she felt determined to continue forward.

“Breathe in through your nose… and out through your mouth. Let the world fall away—like ash from burned pages, like the memory of a name whispered only once.”

Bell inhaled. Exhaled. The practice familiar.

The stone beneath her seemed to dissolve, softening into loamy earth. The smell of lavender deepened until it overwhelmed her, not sharp but sweet, cloying, ancient. It filled her lungs as if she were sinking into the herb itself. A breeze brushed her cheek—cool, scented faintly of something floral and distant.

Then—stillness.

She opened her mind’s eye as Thera spoke. Her voice fading into the background.

She stood at the edge of a vast, black lake. The surface was still as glass, a perfect mirror. Stars wheeled far above, but they wheeled below, too—reflected in water so dark and bottomless it looked like the mouth of the sky.

Beneath her feet, the ground was velvet moss and damp stone. The air shimmered with subtle music—a humming, crystalline resonance that pressed against her skin.

She looked down into the water—and froze.

There, in the reflection, stood a child.

Herself.

But not quite. Her eyes were wider, clearer, full of hunger and innocence and something like sorrow. Her small hands were clasped tight in front of her as though she were holding onto something she couldn’t name.

“Speak to her,” Thera’s voice echoed distantly, as though from across a great ravine.

Bell reached forward—and in that instant, the lake opened.

Not with waves, but with feeling.

Grief poured into her. Not her own grief, but the remembered ache of a child left too long in silence. Longing. Isolation. The heavy, bone-deep ache of loneliness. The emotion hit like a wave, crashing into her ribs. Her breath caught. Her chest burned. Her eyes filled with tears in the waking world.

And then—something shifted.

A spark lit behind her sternum. Her fingers tingled. Her palms blazed with sudden heat.

She opened her eyes.

The candle was out. The room was darker than before, the lichen’s glow now distant and strange.

Thera was still beside her, but her expression was unreadable—something ancient and watchful in the way she studied Bell’s face.

“You felt it,” she said softly.

“I…” Bell touched her chest. “I saw myself. And I felt—everything.”

Thera nodded. “You’ve begun. Pathworking reveals what’s buried. But it also opens you to what lies in others. Which is why we begin your empath training now.”

She reached into a soft leather pouch and withdrew a small, dull stone—black-veined with copper, its surface rough and warm from her touch.

“This is a feeling stone. Each of us has one. We pour our emotions into it—our truth. Then we trade.”

Thera pressed the stone into Bell’s palm.

As soon as her fingers closed around it, Bell inhaled sharply. Warmth surged up her arm. A swirl of emotions rushed through her: quiet joy, deep sorrow, a fierce, wordless pride that brought a lump to her throat. It was like standing in the middle of someone else’s soul.

“It’s like… touching someone’s soul,” Bell whispered.

Thera smiled faintly. “Close, but not quite. You’re open. But that gift is also a wound, if left untended. You’ll need to learn to tell your feelings from those you absorb. You’ll learn shielding, grounding. And more importantly—how to use your gift.”

Bell looked down at the stone, which now thrummed faintly in her hand like a distant heartbeat.

“For what?”

“To calm. To soothe. To speak without speaking. An empath can tilt the mood of a room, gently, like adjusting the sails of a ship. You can be a balm to grief. Or, if you’re not careful… a weapon.”

Thera let Bell hold the feeling stone a little longer, letting the energy linger between them like a fading heartbeat, before she reached forward and gently lifted it from Bell’s hand. Her fingers moved as if lifting a fragile bird from its nest.