The Witch’s Note

The rain had continued for days. The house smelled of damp wood and silence. Olivia moved through the hallways like a shadow, her fingers brushing across the old wallpaper that was starting to peel. Every sound, the creak of the floorboards, the rattling of a loose window latch, made her stop and listen.

Her heart was never still anymore. It beat with suspicion, with memory, with fear. And somewhere beneath all that, a thread of determination. She had lived too long under Ethan’s power, his charm, his lies. Something inside told her she had not yet seen the full truth.

Tonight, her suspicion found proof.

She had been going through her late mother’s chest in the attic. Dust coated her fingers as she pushed aside folded linens and old letters tied with ribbon. That was when she found it, an odd slip of sheepskin, torn and stained, written in a hand she knew by heart.

Her mother’s handwriting.

The words bent in a strange curve, part spell, part warning:

“To bind a soul, you must not cut the flesh but the vow. A false oath leaves chains invisible, but they hold stronger than iron. Beware the man who twists love into ownership.”

Olivia sat down hard on the attic floor, the words shaking her bones.

A spell. Her mother had been a witch in secret, something Olivia had always suspected but never proven. And now, this fragment of a spellbook seemed to speak directly to her life. Chains invisible. A vow that bound without flesh. Her thoughts leapt to Ethan.

Had her mother known? Had she tried to warn her?

The page was torn at the bottom, as if ripped in haste. Olivia wanted the rest. She needed to know what came after.

Her fingers trembled as she tucked the paper into her coat pocket. She stood, and in that moment, she felt the old house itself lean toward her, like it wanted her to uncover what had been buried.

Downstairs, the storm cracked against the windows. Olivia lit only one lamp, keeping the house dim. She no longer felt safe even in her own rooms.

She poured a glass of water but her hand shook so much half of it spilled. She pressed her palm to her forehead and whispered, “Mother… what did you try to tell me?”

That was when the second secret unraveled.

Olivia had been trying to piece together the legal papers of her divorce. They had always felt off, delayed letters, missing copies, her lawyer avoiding certain answers. Tonight, she searched through the safe Ethan had once used. She knew the code; she had always known.

Inside lay neat stacks of envelopes, deeds, old financial statements. She shifted them aside until her eyes froze on a folded legal packet stamped with red ink.

Her divorce papers.

Only they had never been filed.

The clerk’s signature line was blank. The seal of the court missing. It was nothing but a draft, left unfinished.

Her chest constricted. She dropped into a chair, the paper clutched in her hands.

She and Ethan had never been legally divorced.

Every day she thought she was free had been a lie. Every time she thought she could rebuild her life, she had been chained by invisible vows.

The torn spellbook page burned in her pocket. A false oath leaves chains invisible.

Invisible chains. That was exactly what she had been living under.

Olivia could not sit still. She went to the mirror in the hall and studied her reflection, as if she might see the invisible links wrapped around her wrists and throat. Her face looked pale, too thin, haunted.

She thought of Ethan’s words weeks ago, when he had leaned over her hospital bed after the gunshot and poisoned IV. His voice, low and tender, had wrapped around her like silk. “You’re safe now, Liv. Don’t ever leave me again.”

Safe? She had believed him even then, even after he had hurt her, betrayed her, broken her world. Because Ethan knew how to make pain sound like love.

But what if that night had been a trick too?

The thought pierced her like ice. She returned to the safe, hands desperate, searching for more.

At the bottom, beneath an old box of cufflinks, she found a photograph and a letter. The photo was of Ethan in the hospital bed, his shirt torn, his chest wrapped in bloodied bandages. But Olivia remembered the scene too clearly: the frantic night, the ambulance, the way he gasped and clutched her hand.

Yet in this photograph, he was smiling. A calm, staged smile, as if the whole thing had been planned.

The letter was worse. It was addressed not to her, but to himself.

“If she doubts you, remind her of the bullet. Remind her of the night she almost lost you. Pain binds better than rings. She will never walk away from a man she thinks she saved.”

Olivia’s hand flew to her mouth. The room spun.

The gunshot had been staged.

Ethan had faked his injury.

The night that broke her, the night that made her stay out of guilt and fear, had been nothing but a performance.

The rain outside turned into a roar. Thunder rolled over the house. Olivia’s breath came fast and shallow.

She wanted to scream, but no sound came out. Instead, she pressed the torn spell page flat on the table beside the divorce papers and the letter. Together they painted a picture she could not deny:

Her mother’s warning about vows twisted into chains.

Proof she was still bound to Ethan in law.

Evidence that Ethan had faked his gunshot to control her.

She felt the weight of invisible shackles pressing down on her shoulders.

Her mind raced: she had to escape, had to tell someone, had to gather everything and run. But where? Ethan’s reach stretched everywhere. He always found her.

She went to the window. Lightning split the sky. For one instant, she saw her own reflection in the glass layered over the storm outside. And behind her reflection, a shadow.

She spun.

The hallway was empty.

But Olivia knew. She knew Ethan was close. He always appeared when she uncovered too much.

Her pulse thundered in her ears as she gathered the papers, shoving them into her coat. She moved toward the front door, her hand fumbling with the lock.

That was when the door itself opened from the outside.

Ethan stood there, rain dripping from his hair, his smile calm, too calm.

“Liv,” he said softly, almost tenderly. “We need to talk.”

Her fingers tightened on the spell page hidden in her pocket.

The storm howled. The lamp flickered.

And Olivia realized, he already knew what she had found.

Olivia stands frozen in the doorway, Ethan’s eyes locked on hers, while the torn spell page in her pocket burns like fire against her skin. If she moves, he’ll see the papers. If she speaks, he’ll know everything. And somewhere, deep in the house, she hears a whisper that does not belong to either of them: “The vow must be broken in blood.”