At the outskirts of the forest, The Endless One emerged. This time, his flesh wasn't rotting off of his bones. He didn't stink of death.

He looked like Alexander, clad in his wedding clothes—stained with blood, soot, and dirt. But Alexander's face wasn't there. Where his features should have been, instead there was only a blank gray shadow as if what he used to be was scrubbed away to make room for the monster who ruled his body.

The flood of shadows dragged Jonathan's soul back to The Endless One. The frail paper-thin moth was deposited in his upturned hand where it sat in his palm, fluttering on the precipice of danger.

Charlotte couldn't breathe.

Any moment now, The Endless One would cage his fingers around her father's soul. Crush the delicate wings. Silence the beating heart. Consume the life source that belonged to her father.

Charlotte slid off of her horse and withdrew a handful of pieces the broken stone in Jonathan's coat pocket.

"I know what you did," she said. "Five hundred years ago."

She let the crumbled stone drift from her hand and drop into the muddy snow, grinding the pieces deep into the dirt with the heel of her shoe.

"The oath you forged with the Prescott bloodline and the village of Šuná is broken. This is the last body you will ever take possession of."

She wanted to feel triumphant at finally saying those words. After all the heartache she had suffered to reach this point, a victory, no matter how small, was justly deserved.

But she felt nothing.

If only the solution had come to her sooner, before Alexander had given in to The Endless One and surrendered his body, mind, and soul.

"Do you know what it's like to be worshipped?" The Endless One said in a conversational tone. He angled his hand left and right as the moth trundled across his knuckles.

"It tastes as sweet as honey," he continued. "Like...ambrosia."

The Endless One's fingers twitched, enclosing around Jonathan's soul lightly. Charlotte's heart stuttered.

"Please no," she whispered.

"To have that sustenance denied you is...cruel agony. Slowly starving to death over centuries, millennium. Your mortal lives pass so quickly that you have no concept of how much suffering time can bring."

"Is that why you left so many people hollow?" Charlotte said. As she spoke, she slowly worked her hand into her pocket where the wraithstone was. "To show them what it was like for you to waste away?"

The Endless One hummed and shook his head. "No. Although that's a rather poetic idea. I like it."

Charlotte's fingers brushed the warm wraithstone. The last of her magic seeped out of the stone's safe keeping and into her skin, into her blood, igniting through her veins. She had just enough left for one solid shot. One hit was all she needed.

"Don't look at me like that," The Endless One said. "As if I'm the monster. It's your beloved's family who started this. I'm simply meting out punishment for the sins of the father."

Charlotte's fingers went still. The wraithstone dropped back into her pocket, empty and cold.

"What are you talking about?" she said.

The Endless One laughed softly, an eerie sound when he had no mouth to laugh with. The sound swept around her, plucking at her clothes, her hair, wiggling into her brain like a thousand worms, chewing, sucking, leeching her sanity dry.

"The Prescotts were explorers," he said absently as he toyed with the moth. "English heroes praised for their courage and stalwart hearts as they braved the supposedly uncharted territory of pagan, heathen lands."

The Endless One paused and if he had eyes to see with, Charlotte knew he would have been looking right at her, pinning her with a dark stare. But there was only that blank face and the gravelly, echoing voice.

"The Prescotts blazed trails through wild forests, just like the one we're in now." The Endless One swept an arm towards the surrounding trees, laden with snow, hissing and rustling in the wind. "You accuse me of leaving people hollow. The Prescotts left the dead wherever they went."

Charlotte didn't respond. She began muttering under her breath, spinning the words of a hex with the threads of her magic twisting around her fingers, tucked in the pocket of Jonathan's coat. She didn't believe him anyway. He was just trying to rattle her...

The Endless One cocked his head.

"But of course you don't want to hear this from me," he said. "Perhaps you should talk to someone you have a little more good faith with."

He flicked his wrist and shadows swirled off into the trees. A moment later, Yulia stepped forward, wreathed in darkness from the neck down. Her eyes were bright and clear, her jaw clenched in defiance. The Endless One hadn't taken her soul. Yet.

"Tell her," The Endless One said. "You know, the part you kept from her before."

Yulia's gaze softened with apology.

"It's true," she said. "Šuná was safe, untouched by war, hunger, famine. And then the English came. Only a small party." She shook her head. "What they carried with them..."

"The Black Death," The Endless One put in. "There was a reason such a tiny little village was so secluded. It was too small to survive a ravaging plague, spreading like wildfire. To find a doctor who would be willing to brave these woods, these mountains, this treacherous terrain...as you might have guessed, that didn't happen."

"You saved Šuná out of the goodness of your heart, is that it?" Charlotte countered.

The Endless One spread his hands. "They came to me for help. How could I refuse?"

"This is righteous punishment, then? Cursing the Prescott men to die for the illness they had spread?"

"It caused quite a bit of damage, I'm afraid. If they hadn't been careless, perhaps things might have been different. As you can see, I'm not the one at fault here. Alexander has paid for the crimes of his ancestors."

"But you won't stop there," Charlotte countered.

"Why should I?" The Endless One replied with a shrug. The motion was strange on Alexander's body, too casual for the grim circumstances.

"The world forgot me," he added. "Discarded me for the next shiny god who came along. Do you have any idea how quickly and easily gods are replaced? I have to make my mark. I have to ensure, one way or the other, I will never be forgotten like so many other gods have before me."

The Endless One closed his fist around Jonathan's soul.

Charlotte brought her hands up, threads of magic glowing silver against her brown skin. But before she could fire it off, a screech tore through the trees.

Ink black feather slashed down the road. A crow descended on The Endless One, claws extended, wings pummeling his head and shoulders.

More crows poured from the forest, streaming towards Charlotte. They perched on her arms and shoulders, covered the ground at her feet.

Voices bubbled into her mind, dozens of them at once, filling her thoughts with spells and incantations, hexes and jinxes. Her flock of familiars was alive. The Endless One hadn't killed them as she'd feared.

"You're alive," Charlotte breathed with relief. She spread her arms wide to grant the birds more room to settle on her. "All of you."

He came to destroy us at Laeves Keep, Nivian said. We had to leave.

The first crow—Nivian's familiar, Charlotte could see that now—plucked Jonathan's soul out of The Endless One's hand and darted away. The bird landed on Jonathan's shoulder and placed the moth on the collar of his shirt where it crawled up the column of his throat and came to rest at the corner of his mouth.

"How did you survive?" Charlotte said. "I couldn't hear you. I thought you were gone."

The Endless One attempted to strip us of our moorings. If we remained in communication with you, he would have used us against you. We chose to sever contact in order to keep you, and your magic, safe.

"Why didn't you find me after Laeves Keep burned?"

We tried. But your magic was so faint, we couldn't establish a connection.

The Endless One hurled shards of darkness like arrows. Crows scattered.

Charlotte spread her hands palms up, magic sizzling and crackling.

Don't, Nivian said.

Charlotte faltered. Hesitation could kill her now but the doubts remained, nudging at her, insisting she would fail again.

"I broke the oath that bound him," she said. "He's trapped in a mortal body with nowhere else to go. Once I finish off the host he wears, the curse will be exposed. I can burn it away."

Your magic isn't strong enough yet. Our connection is rough as it is.

"Then what are you—"

Lift the veil, Nivian cut in. Bring us into the living world.

Charlotte felt her magic stutter as her concentration lagged. Spirits weren't meant to exist in the living world. They became dissatisfied, angry, violent, caught between death and the life they no longer could have for themselves.

That was the whole purpose of Charlotte's magic. She guided spirits to their final resting place and gave them peace.

She did not bring them into the living world where they didn't belong.

Trust me, Charlotte, Nivian said. You're a witch, and a witch is never meant to be alone. Let us stand with you now. Together.

Charlotte glanced at The Endless One. He was gathering his darkness, swirling it in his hands like a thunderstorm in preparation to hit her with a hard blow she wouldn't come back from this time.

If she wasted her magic, she wouldn't have enough to fight back with. She would be left vulnerable, defenseless, while he held the power of countless souls he had stolen during his free rein.

Then again, the last time she had fought against him alone, it had nearly killed her.

Charlotte curled her fingers into fists, turned her hands over, palms facing towards the earth.

She whispered six words, soft as the moth wings brushing Jonathan's cheek, soft as the snow sifting from the branches overhead, soft as a witch's kiss.

Between The Endless One and Charlotte, a shimmer like starlight fell in fold after fold. It pulled to one side to reveal a blank blue expanse, as if a scrap of the night sky had fallen to earth.

The last of Charlotte's magic, twisted around her fingers in silver loops, went grey. Finally exhausted beyond retrieval.

But the veil was lifted.

Through the gap, spirits poured forth like water, all of them witches, surrounding Charlotte in a haze of grey.