The Witching Hour. The world where witches could walk freely. A realm hidden from the eyes of the Barebloods, those born without mana.
It was an ordinary day for Aurora Welsch.
At least, that was what she told herself.
But the silence in her home never felt ordinary. It pressed down on her like an expectation too heavy to carry, and somewhere within the halls, disappointment always echoed louder than her footsteps.
"Again?"
Her mother's voice carried through the corridor.
Aurora stood just out of sight, frozen in place.
Her family had already spent a fortune acquiring circulation techniques from the Great Houses. The Great Genesis Circulation, developed by the Pantheras. Crystallification, created by the Ravens. And lastly, the common-folk technique known as the Mana Heart Method.
None of them had truly worked.
Or rather, they had worked, but not in a way the Welsch family considered worthy.
Aurora could feel it.
The disappointment. The frustration. The quiet shame settling between her mother and grandmother like a verdict already decided.
And then she heard it.
Her grandmother's voice, cold and final, suggesting that perhaps it would be better to "birth another witch" instead.
That was the moment something inside Aurora cracked.
She had two brothers already. She had tried everything she could to avoid becoming a failure in their eyes. To be anything other than a disappointment.
And then, she found it.
The research notes of Charlotte Sweeiz.
The Heretical Witch.
The Welsch family had been entrusted with them by the Ravens themselves, safeguarding the incomplete manuscripts after they began spreading four years ago. They were forbidden knowledge. Sealed, classified, and meant to be erased from public reach.
Charlotte Sweeiz had appeared and disappeared like wind.
She had come into the Witching Hour, shaken its foundations with her ideas, defied every House doctrine, and then vanished without explanation. Her last known act was an interview. Speaking openly about her heretical theories, before she smiled, stuck out her tongue at the reporters, and disappeared entirely.
Aurora had seen that footage before.
And she had thought she looked… free.
So when she found the notes, she smiled.
Not carefully. Not politely.
But gleefully.
It felt like the world had finally answered her silent prayers. Not to become perfect, but at least not to remain useless.
The notes contained something called the Lunarian Principle.
Charlotte's proposed circulation theory. How it works was that the moon, which blessed women with the ability to use mana, can be extracted with its mana. Instead of gathering mana slowly from the world, why not gather from the source itself. Charlotte combined the knowledge of the Barebloods on how the moon reflects the light of the sun, turning it into moonlight and how witches absorb mana from the surrounding. However, it was incomplete.
Aurora studied it in secret for days. She practiced relentlessly, repeating the steps over and over, but nothing happened. No response. No awakening. No change.
Until something inside her shifted.
"I… I should be approaching this like Ms. Charlotte," she whispered to herself. "I need to be… creative."
And then—
It worked.
Mana surged through her body violently, overflowing beyond control. The pressure became so intense that the windows of the Welsch estate cracked simultaneously, echoing through the house like a warning.
Her family rushed to her room.
Aurora turned toward them, still overwhelmed by the flow of power, her expression bright with hope.
She thought—foolishly—that she would finally be praised.
Instead, she saw fear.
Disgust.
And then her mother spoke.
"You!" she shouted. "You harbor that witch's circulation! I can feel it!"
Her grandmother stepped forward, eyes wide with fury.
"Guards!"
Before Aurora could even speak, they were already moving. Shackles designed specifically to suppress mana circulation were placed on her, cutting her off from her own power.
She was taken away.
Weeks passed.
Then months.
Eventually, she was brought before the Three Influentials of the Witching Hour.
Aurora pleaded. She begged. She explained.
But they did not listen.
They only watched her with cold curiosity, as if she were something to be examined rather than a person.
"How did you learn that?"
"You know that witch's grimoire contains heretical thinking!"
"Such methods cannot be integrated into our pure circulation systems!"
The words repeated endlessly, layered over the pain as spells struck her body again and again.
She screamed.
No one stopped it.
At night, she was allowed to rest, only to be paraded the next day as an example. A warning. A failure made visible.
Days turned into weeks.
Weeks into months.
A normal person would have broken already.
But Aurora did not.
Instead, something else formed in her place.
Revenge.
And with that, she continued to study Charlotte's circulation method in secret, refining what little she had understood. She adapted it, practiced it, and merged it with her own affinity for ice magic.
For the first time, she progressed.
"I… Ms. Charlotte…" she whispered in the dark. "Where did you go…"
Another month passed.
Then the day of execution arrived.
They paraded her through the Witching Hour again.
But this time, something was different.
The cuffs that bound her were already broken.
No one noticed.
Not until she exhaled.
A single breath of cold air.
And the restraints shattered.
Aurora smiled.
For the first time, she truly smiled.
And then she laughed.
Ice erupted across the Witching Hour like a living catastrophe. Spikes of frozen death tore through streets and buildings, consuming everything in their path. Witches, vampires, werebeings, fae—none were spared as the city turned into a frozen graveyard.
In that moment, she became the third Calamity to ravage the Witching Hour.
But even then, she was not done.
When the battle ended, she was not killed.
Instead, she was sealed.
Absolute Ice.
A self-cast prison of unbreakable frost that preserved her consciousness while trapping her body. A living monument of her own defeat.
And so she remained.
Displayed.
Watched.
Mocked.
Two years passed while she sat inside the ice, conscious of every insult, every stare, every laugh. Visitors came and went. Some feared her. Some admired her downfall. Others simply treated her like an exhibit.
And slowly, even her hatred began to fade into silence.
Until—
A sound shattered everything.
A crack.
Then a boom.
The Witching Hour trembled.
Aurora felt it before she saw it.
Something impossible had returned.
Charlotte Sweeiz had come back.
Dressed casually, almost offensively normal, hoodie and jogging pants, she walked through the Witching Hour like it had never mattered to her absence. Compared to the robed witches around her, she looked like she had stepped in from another world entirely.
People rushed to stop her.
The Great Houses responded immediately.
Edith Panthera.
Persephone Raven.
Mildred Rossi.
And countless high-ranking witches stood before her, wands raised, magic ready.
"Halt! By decree of the Witching Hour, Charlotte Sweeiz is to be detained as a heretic!"
"You have the audacity to return?" Persephone Raven scoffed. "How stupid can you be, Charlotte?"
Charlotte only smiled.
Then she vanished.
A hole in space opened beneath her feet.
"Space magic? Since when—" Mildred Rossi began, panic rising in her voice.
But Charlotte was already elsewhere.
She reappeared in front of Aurora's prison.
For the first time in two years, Aurora smiled inside the ice.
Charlotte tilted her head.
The others attacked instantly.
But the spells never reached her.
They simply… disappeared.
Confusion spread through the crowd.
Even Aurora didn't understand what she was seeing.
And then—
Crack.
The Absolute Ice shattered.
Silence fell.
The unbreakable prison had been broken.
The Welsch family stood frozen in disbelief.
Before anyone could react, another spatial rift opened beneath Charlotte and Aurora, swallowing them both.
They fell.
When Aurora regained consciousness, she was no longer in the Witching Hour.
She was on top of a skyscraper.
The wind was cold.
The world below was unfamiliar.
And in front of her—
A magical projection hovered in the air, broadcasting across the hidden Witching Hour.
Charlotte Sweeiz stood before it.
"Missed me much?"
Her voice echoed through every corner of the realm.
Witches everywhere watched in silence.
"I was gone for four years… and this is what you've done? Really?"
She sighed, unimpressed, before turning slightly toward Aurora.
"So you're the overly obsessed fan?"
She flicked Aurora's forehead.
Aurora blinked, rubbing the spot instinctively.
Charlotte turned away casually, as if everything that had just happened was normal. She glanced at Aurora's tattered clothing and casually cast Create Item, reconstructing her outfit into simple clothes.
A basic shirt. Pants. Undergarments.
Nothing ceremonial. Nothing grand.
Just functional.
Charlotte then turned her back while Aurora changed, causing confusion to flicker across the girl's expression.
When she finished, Charlotte spoke again, still not looking at her.
"I disappear for years and come back to someone calling themselves my student…"
She sighed.
Then, without warning—
"Wanna join my coven for real?"
Aurora froze.