The rain over Salem’s End had a memory. It remembered the fires, the stones, the whispered names. Tonight, it fell in sheets, drumming a frantic rhythm against the stained glass of the Ivory Tower—the last covenstead in the Northeast.
Tonight’s supplicants were a delegation from the United Nations. Climate collapse had outrun technology. Rising seas swallowed coastlines; the sun scorched the breadbaskets dry. The world’s last hope wasn’t a missile or a vaccine. It was a coven of women who could command the wind, seed the clouds, and stitch the torn fabric of weather itself.
She swept into the Grand Conclave, her velvet gown trailing like a pool of midnight. The delegation—three men in expensive, ill-fitting suits—stood huddled by the hearth, as if the fire’s warmth could protect them from her. Dominant Witches
Seraphina flicked her wrist. The man’s mouth fused shut. Not with stitches or glue—with a simple, absolute cessation of function. His eyes bulged. His companions stepped back.
“Negotiate?” She tasted the word like spoiled fruit. “You misunderstand, Mr. Graves. You are not here to negotiate. You are here to submit .” The rain over Salem’s End had a memory
The age of dominance had only just begun.
Seraphina knelt before Graves—not in supplication, but like a chess player examining a doomed king. “You came here thinking you had leverage. That we needed your permission, your treaties, your legitimacy . Darling.” She touched his chin with one cool finger. “We are witches. We were burning before you had grammar. We will be dancing on your graves before your grandchildren learn to lie.” Tonight’s supplicants were a delegation from the United
She touched the mirror. “We remember,” she whispered.
Seraphina glided to her throne—a throne carved from the petrified heart of a redwood she herself had raised from a seed a century ago. She sat, crossed one leg over the other, and let the silence expand until it hurt.