Azramoch’s POV
The girl had no idea she was being watched, well, stalked. Then again, he doubted she was accustomed to having eyes on her.
She moved like someone used to disappearing—shoulders curled, head ducked, voice low even in her own home. The apartment was a shrine to self-erasure, with bare walls and no photos. Candles snuffed out before they could burn long enough to cast a shadow.
Azramoch crouched in the rafters of the crumbling apartment complex, arms crossed over his chest, smoke curling lazily from his skin. He hadn’t breathed mortal air in over a hundred years, but the place still reeked: grease, mold, and a scent he loathed most of all—hopelessness.
He rolled his neck, sighing through his nose.
“Babysitting,” he muttered. “I’m babysitting.”
Below him, through the cracked ceiling and the thin veil separating realms, she moved. One of her grandmother’s worn leather journals was cracked open in her lap as she sat cross-legged on the floor, candlelight flickering beside her like it was eavesdropping.
A cheap space heater hummed near her knees, its orange glow competing with the candlelight. A half-burned bundle of herbs – safe or maybe mugwort – sat in a chipped dish on the windowsill, forgotten. A scratched-up coffee mug held her grandmother’s onyx rosary, beads dulled from years of quiet use.
“Observe her,” his Master had said, curling one clawed finger around Azramoch’s jaw, dragging him close with the threat of fire and purpose. “The signs align. She’s untrained, alone, and carries the blood. We must reach her before another Circle does. Be ready.”
He’d expected some unholy hellcat with midnight eyes and dark seduction on her breath. A powerful witch cloaked in blood and thunder. Maybe even a demon groupie in a leather corset.
At the very least, someone who knew what the hell she was doing.
Instead?
Instead, he got Calla.
Soft-voiced. Eyes that always looked two nights short of sleep. A slip of a girl in an oversized sweater, quietly folding her boyfriend’s laundry while he sent passive-aggressive texts about her “forgetting to iron his dress shirts.”
He hadn’t asked questions. Demons didn’t—not if they wanted to keep their skin intact and their contracts honored. But now, after three painfully long weeks of watching the small witch’s life unravel on repeat, he had questions.
Lots of them.
But... something kept him from walking away.
Not just the assignment. Not just the prophecy.
It wasn’t unheard of for him to storm back to his Master and tell him to shove it. Sure, it usually resulted in some part of him being lit on fire or inverted for a few months. But this? Whatever this was, it was starting to feel... different.
It was the way she lit candles, as if they were sacred. The way she whispered intentions under her breath—not spells. Just quiet pleas to the universe, hopeful and half-sure. The way she flinched when Curtis called, then forced herself to smile like she wasn’t dying inside.
Wrath recognizes its kin.
And beneath her gentle silence, Calla had the slow burn of a fuse. Azramoch found himself eager to see what would finally light it. Curtis had better pray she never lights that match. The so-called man was her boyfriend. He came and went like a fungus. He left his dishes, his dirty clothes, and his scent all over the apartment, like a mutt marking territory.
Azramoch struggled to understand why this Curtis creature was allowed to exist. He didn’t hit her. That would’ve made things easier. But oh, he eroded her. Word by word. Smile by Smile. Slow as rust. Clever, like all the worst kinds of monsters were.
His tail flicked, lashing the air. If the enchantress ever gave the word, he’d peel that man like an orange.
“Let me maim him,” he’d once said, whispering just outside the veil. “Just a toe or three. He’ll hardly miss them.” But, naturally, she hadn’t been able to hear him.
He wasn’t sure when he’d stopped thinking of her as just a box to tick off. Maybe it was the way her fingers hovered over spell work, the tips illuminating like the edges of flame. Perhaps it was the way her lips formed half-formed spells that tripped over themselves like frightened children.
Or maybe it was when she tucked her grandmother’s Book of Shadows beneath the loose floorboard, like it was something sacred. Something worth hiding.
Azramoch turned his attention back to her. She was tracing faded sigils with her fingertips, brow furrowed. He tilted his head.
Her grandmother had been clever—a closet witch in a Christian-draped town. The Book of Shadows had been encoded in shorthand, disguised as old herbal remedies and grief journaling. But the magic pulsed through every inch of it, dormant and waiting.
Each time Calla touched the pages, it hummed like something recognizing its own.
She didn’t know who she was.
Didn’t know what she carried.
The magic wasn’t loud enough for her to hear it yet—but it pulsed in her bones. Azramoch felt it, felt it see him. And that was before she slammed the book shut with a frustrated sigh.
“I just want one damned spell to...” she paused, then looked up—right at him.
As though she could see through the veil.
“I want to be me without shame,” she whispered. “I want my fucking backbone back.”
Her voice wavered on the last part, a lone tear tracking down her cheek.
Something pulled tight inside Azramoch’s chest. Something he had no interest in naming.
This was the key. The tiny witch’s longing, the slip. The perfect storm.
A sly smile curled at the corner of his mouth as he turned away, disappearing into smoke and shadow.
There were things he had to set up.
The summoning wasn’t far now.
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