Reborn as a witch in another world [slice of life, isekai] (ch. 76)
Blurb:
What does it take to turn your life around? Death, of course!
I died in this lame ass world of ours and woke up in a completely new one. I had a new name, a new face and a new body. This was my second chance to live a better life than the previous one.
But goddamn it, why did I have to be a witch? Now I don't just have to be on the run from the Inquisition that wants to burn me and my friends. But I also have to earn a living?
Follow Elsa Grimly as she:
- Makes new friends and tries to save them and herself from getting burned
- Finds redemption from the deeds of her previous life
- Tries to get along with a cat who (like most cats) believes she runs the world
- Deals with other slice of life shenanigans.
--
Chapter/ 76. Dark Forces
The paper cutout burnt in a gray flame. A lump formed in my throat. I shouldn't have been surprised. Martha Langsdale was a curse now. Curses are nothing but a well of hatred. So what if she showed us what she had been through before she became this twisted force of nature? So what if her mortal life had been miserable? This was what she had become. A haunted laughter. A bloodthirsty aura. This girl who had found comfort in the death of other people still craved for more lives even now that she had perished herself.
I shouldn't have been surprised. But it still bothered me more than I wanted to put on.
Lily probably sensed my conflict and hesitation as I just stood in the middle of the desolate workshop with the charred paper doll in my hand. Her own hand closed around my wrist. Her touch was warm, gentle, reassuring. “Miss Elsa?” she said in a soft voice. “We don't have to do this.”
“That's not true,” I said as the burnt doll in my hand crumbled to ashes. “This is a big place, Martha's curse is strong. Her powers are unique and potent. And think…think of how cheap this property will be for us. What kind of idiot would give up an opportunity to inherit all of this?” My voice was breaking and I didn’t want to face Lily. Even though I hadn't heard the voice of her abyss other than that one time at the library, I didn't want to risk hearing her now. She was probably pitying me inside her head and I didn't want to hear that.
Lily remained silent but her hand never left mine. “I understand,” she said quietly. “If you think channeling this curse is better than cleansing then I trust your judgement. And as always, I'm right next to you.”
Her gentle reassurance gave me a lot more strength than I liked to admit. Maybe it was because I never had anyone speak to me the way she did, nor hold my hand when I was alone in the darkness.
I straightened myself and gave her a small smile. “I'll get to it then,” I said.
She smiled back and let go of my hand. I performed the accursed exchange ritual.
At the end of it, ten paper dolls lay on the floor in front of us, each of their limbs, heads and torsos marked with pentacles with different marks at their centers. The ritual had been a success but the conditions were a lot different than they were when I used curse channeling cards.
Martha's powers would allow me to manipulate my surroundings as long as the curse could claim a life at the end. Each of the paper doll’s body parts could be torn to use individually--that meant, each part could consume one life. For ten paper dolls with each of their heads, torso and four limbs marked with a different kind of pentacle meant I had the power to kill sixty people as long as the curse was sure that death was inevitable. If that condition wasn't met, I was the one who would die.
I bent down to gather my newly forged weapons and slid them into my reticule. I sighed as I moved my gaze over the ruin around us.
It was nothing more than a ruin now. Martha's malicious presence was gone.
Lily and I walked away in silence and made our way back to the inn. As we lay in our individual beds, I kept gazing into the darkness, unable to fall asleep for some reason.
“You should rest now, Miss Elsa,” Lily said from the bed next to mine. “We've done a lot today.”
I sighed tiredly. She wasn't wrong. We had done a lot indeed. And I could feel the fatigue weighing down on me alright. I still couldn't stop thinking about what I had seen at the school.
“She is a curse so all she could do is hate and kill,” I said as I turned to face Lily in the dark. “But what she showed us, wasn't it…didn't it feel human to you? Like maybe a part of her still grieved what happened to her?”
For a minute, all I could hear was Lily's soft breathing. For a minute, I was sure she had fallen asleep.
My forehead scrunched up. Whatever was on her mind, she was withholding it. The fact that she could somehow stop herself from reflecting over things in her mind still frustrated me a bit. But despite the short time that I'd lived as Elsa Grimly, I already found Lily so familiar. I had begun to understand the meaning behind her silence.
So I said it out loud for both of us. “A curse can't grieve nor feel empathy,” I said as I turned on my back and looked up at the ceiling again. “Martha wasn't showing us what she had lived through, nor was she sharing her pain. She just wanted to show how powerful she was by making bricks and glass slide apart like curtains. It's just me who wants to keep seeing Martha's curse as something human, right?”
Lily still said nothing.
I sighed and closed my eyes. “Good night, Lily.”
“Good night, Miss Elsa.”
--
The next morning, I dragged Lily with me to the local library. Martha Langsdale hadn’t left my thoughts, even in my sleep, she didn't leave me alone. I didn't know what it was about that girl that had left such an impression on me. Was it the fact that she had been all alone when alive and now that she was dead she would forever be seen as a monster by everyone? Or was it the fact that no matter how I tried to perceive her as a human, even I couldn't deny that she was far from it now.
Why? Why did I want to think of her as a human being even now?
I asked the librarian if they had archived the old newspapers of the Noblegate. She handed me a hefty binder for the last decade and left us alone while we flipped through the pages.
What happened at the Doughtry Tech hadn't been a small scandal. Noblegate newspapers had probably covered the thing extensively. Especially considering the dark magic hysteria that had kept the common folk terrified for longer than a decade now.
And on top of that Martha Langsdale's father had been an infamous heretic according to what we found at the school last night. There had to be something that would shed more light on the matter.
I finally found what I was looking for. Owen Langsdale, Martha's father, had been a struggling artist living in Stonebarrow. When his dreams of becoming a famous painter had been shattered, he had turned to toymaking and apparently, the ruins of his old shop still stood in Stonebarrow. From what little background the newspapers gave of him, he seemed like a fairly normal man.
It was hard to understand why he might've raised a havoc about the Steam Elemental all of the sudden. He had gotten himself arrested several times while protesting against the witch hunts that had begun to spread slowly across the country. But whatever was left of his reputation really took a nose dive when he made his most controversial opinion yet.
"The Steam Elemental is not a symbol."
I didn't know what it mean. Even the newspapers didn't explain it any further. The reporters just seemed too eager to declare the man a completely deranged heretic. What followed was the news of Owen getting thrown in jail and later getting executed along with several other people accused of blasphemy and heresy.
The government spared his daughter, Martha, and sent her to a government funded orphanage. Later she might've left the orphanage because the place didn't have the facility to raise kids above twelve.
These couple of years she spent at the orphanage was the only time newspapers left her alone. But then she came to Noblegate and the rest was history.
Martha's last story in the newspapers was of her burning her classmates in the school workshop.
I shut the binder of newspapers and heaved a sigh. I still felt like I had a weight on my shoulders. “What did you want to see, Miss Elsa?” Lily said, frowning. “Why are you this…obsessed?”
I stared gloomily at the binder for a second before saying, “I wanted to see if she found peace somehow.” I regretted it the moment I said it. It sounded so stupid in the light of everything we knew.
Lily cocked her head. “Peace?”
I sighed. “I always thought when someone dies they either go to heaven or hell,” I said. “And a little while ago we found out that heaven isn't a sanctuary for the kind, tired souls. I was hoping Martha found some kind of peace in her life. Something that didn't involve killing or misery.”
And what I didn't tell Lily was that I didn't want to think of Martha as a curse. I looked at the tattoo of Liberation Ritual on my hand. Old Elsa had killed herself and left behind this curse. Martha died and became a curse herself. For once I wanted to see someone die and find peace. I wanted to see a life end without a tragic epilogue beyond it.
“Is it really important for something to end in order for it to find peace?” Lily said.
I looked at her. “Don't you find it unsettling? For things to just keep going on without a closure?”
“I think a closure would make things forgettable.” She shrugged. “Yes, heaven and hell aren't what I thought they were either. But they are a lot more interesting than what I imagined them to be. Miss Elsa, if something ends, it should end memorably, not cleanly. If I ever die, I would want to make it memorable too.”
I just stared at Lily. I had drank Fyorwin's potion that morning so I couldn't hear her thoughts. I didn't know if it would've been of any use since Lily's abyss was mostly silent. But her statement made me curious if she really believed what she was saying?
I lightly slapped her cheek. “Don't talk about dying memorably in front of me. I would transfer your soul into a cat like Smokewell did before I let you die.”
Lily grinned at me. “See? It seems like even you don't like closures, Miss Elsa. And it's absolutely fine. Some things really shouldn't end at all.”
--
While Lily and I were leaving the library the librarian called out to us. “I saw what you were reading,” she said.
She was a middle aged woman with salt and pepper hair and half moon glasses that rested on her nose. “Martha Langsdale,” she said slowly. “She used to come here everyday. Always kept her head down, never bothered anyone and always thanked me while returning her due books. I remember she used to read those Velorian poetry books the most.”
“She sounds like a normal girl,” I said.
“Certainly had me fooled until the newspapers began to expose her.” The librarian shrugged. “I bet she was under the influence of dark forces of some kind.”
I gave a small cynical smile and a nod. “Yes. Dark forces indeed.”
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Posted Oct 6, 2025, 2:41 PM UTC