All Chapters of The Witch And The Alpha : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Vaelor POVNo one answers immediately.Not because the question lacks an answer.Because every possible answer feels cruel.The entity stands motionless in the center of the clearing while the forest waits with it, silent in that unbearable way living things become silent around pain they recognize.And I recognize this pain.Not its scale. Not its nature.But the shape of it.The fear that one day you might stop noticing the line between survival and harm.The fear that becoming something dangerous might happen gradually enough to feel reasonable while it’s happening.Kaelith watches the entity carefully. Not detached anymore. Curious, yes, but there’s caution underneath it now. Real caution.Ilyra looks like she wants to answer immediately and is forcing herself not to.Good.This requires honesty more than comfort.The entity looks at each of us slowly.“You all hesitated,” it says quietly.“Yes,” I reply.“Why?”Because no one can promise you certainty.Because humans become monst

Ilyra POVThe silence after the entity’s question lingered too long.Not ordinary silence. Not the kind that settles naturally when a conversation ends.This silence felt aware of itself.The forest held it carefully, almost reverently, as though the trees themselves feared disturbing whatever had just formed between us.If I ever become something terrible… how will any of you know whether it’s still me inside it?No one answered because none of us could.The truth sat there in the center of the clearing like an open wound: people lost themselves every day while believing they were still the same. Sometimes slowly enough that no one noticed until the damage was already irreversible.And somehow the thought of that happening to the entity unsettled me more than it should have.Maybe because I could already see the beginnings of personhood inside it now.Or maybe because some part of me feared that if it ever became monstrous, I would still recognize traces of the thing learning how to

Ilyra POVThe scream did not come from the creature.It came from the forest itself.Every tree around the clearing bent violently at once, branches thrashing overhead hard enough to snap against each other. Roots tore upward from the ground in massive twisting coils as the earth split open beneath our feet.I nearly fell.Vaelor caught my arm before the ground could throw me completely sideways, dragging me back as a crack ripped through the clearing where I had been standing seconds earlier.The entity staggered backward, clutching its head with both hands.“No,” it whispered. “No, stop.”But nothing stopped.The forest had lost control of itself.The creature stood unmoving in the center of the chaos while the trees recoiled around it like terrified animals trying to escape a predator they could not outrun. The many faces trapped beneath its bark-body writhed slowly now, eyes open and aware. Some mouthed silent words. Others only stared.And all of them were looking at the entity.

Kaelith POVAt first I thought the light beneath the crack came from reflections.Something inhuman in the mind always tries to make the impossible resemble something known before accepting it for what it truly is. Firelight. Water. Crystals beneath the earth.Anything but eyes.But the glow below the split earth moved with intention.Two vast shapes opening slowly within the darkness beneath the roots.Watching.The entire forest reacted instantly.Every tree bent lower. Every branch pulled inward toward the clearing. Roots surfaced through the soil in trembling waves as though something beneath the world had just inhaled and the forest itself was caught inside its lungs.I had spent most of my life studying ruins, forgotten religions, fractured kingdoms, and creatures older than civilized memory. I had seen things powerful enough to erase cities.None of them frightened me the way those eyes did.Because those eyes did not feel awake.They felt patient.The entity stopped breathing

Vaelor POVThe structure rising from beneath the world stopped pretending it was part of nature.What had begun as roots and shadow and fractured memory now formed something closer to intention. A vast twisting spine of living material, threaded with pulsing light, dragging fragments of forest upward as though the entire landscape had become loose pages being pulled back into a book that had once been torn apart.And the book was trying to close itself again.The entity remained on its knees at the center of the clearing, trembling. Vaelor still held its shoulder, but his grip had shifted now—not restraining, not comforting. Anchoring. The difference mattered.Ilyra stood a few steps away, frozen in place, watching the rising structure with something between fear and recognition I could not yet interpret.Kaelith had moved closer to the edge of the crack again. Too close.Always too close.The forest no longer felt like a place we were standing in. It felt like a system correcting its