Deus Necros

“Unfortunately, our time has come to an end.” The witch said.

The tea’s warmth still lingered in the air, but the words cooled it all the same. Outside the hut, the forest remained unnaturally still, as though it listened with the same attention as the four guests inside. The Witch’s expression carried no panic, no urgency, only the quiet certainty of someone who had learned to treat endings as scheduled things.

“I suppose your allotted time in this world is over?” Ludwig asked.

He kept his cup in hand, fingers resting on porcelain as if the simple act of holding it proved he wasn’t shaken. Yet his eyes did not wander; they stayed on her, careful and narrow, like a man gauging the edge of a rule he could not break.

“It is indeed as you believe. The noise from those above is getting fairly loud. I must go.” She said she stood up, and in her hand a small ring appeared. It looked like it had an emerald for a stone on it. More like a lover’s ring than anything else.

When she rose, the room felt smaller for an instant, as if her presence had been holding it together. The phrase “those above” sat like a ceiling lowering, and the hut’s quiet seemed to sharpen around it.

The ring came into being without effort, no glow, no chant, just a small, elegant thing suddenly occupying her palm. The emerald caught the light with a deep, wet green that didn’t belong to ordinary gemstones, and the metal band looked too clean, too intimate, as if it had been meant for a finger and not for trade.

“In here you’ll find many things you’ll be pleased to use. Thank you for everything dearest Ludwig,” the witch said as she gave Ludwig a small kiss on the cheek.

The kiss landed lightly, almost a brush, warm and brief, leaving behind the faintest scent of herbs and something older, paper, earth, night rain. Ludwig didn’t move away, but his eyes flickered once, as though he’d felt more than touch in that moment.

The ring weighed in his hand with the awkwardness of a gift that carried obligation, even if the words around it were sweet.

Redd’s shoulders bounced with the quiet laugh he didn’t dare make too loud, his grin exposing teeth even in his half-shifted state. It was the kind of childish triumph that appeared whenever someone else’s dignity got gently dragged through the mud. Then the grin faltered into something more cautious, the thought losing its shine the moment he remembered what sort of being stood in front of them, and how little their opinions mattered to something like that.

“What about us, are we simply going to walk to Tulmud from here?” Tull’s voice dragged the room back into practical matters, sharp and controlled. He kept his posture straight, sword-hand relaxed but ready, as if refusing to be lulled by soft voices and tea.

His eyes went briefly to the hut’s doorway, as though expecting to see desert glare and a yellow river beyond it.

“You can, or do you wish to return to the desert?” she asked.

The question sounded like offering two doors in a hallway, both equally easy to open. The Witch’s gaze slid over them without strain, and the calm in her tone made it clear she could place them wherever she pleased, if she felt like it.

“I’d rather not, the Queen’s pretty pissed at us right now, I have no intentions of going back,” Ludwig replied.

He rolled the ring once between his fingers, then stilled it, as if keeping his hands occupied kept his mind from dwelling too long on what “noise from those above” meant.

“I feel bad for Kassim though,” Redd said, he was the only one to remember the captain who was stuck outside the entrance to the yellow branch.

Redd’s snark softened into something that almost resembled guilt, his gaze shifting away as if picturing the captain’s last expression when they left him behind. For all his bravado, the small, ordinary losses seemed to stick to him more stubbornly than the grand ones.

“That man is safe and sound, I picked him up and placed him back into the comfort of his home, he’ll have no memory of seeing the Lustful Death, and that should be protection to himself,” she said as her body began shimmering.

The Witch’s answer was smooth, immediate, almost dismissively competent. The shimmer began at her shoulders and ran down her arms like light refusing to cling, softening her outline.

Her skin looked less like flesh and more like a surface reality couldn’t decide how to hold onto. The mention of no memory landed with a strange mercy, sharp, surgical, cleaning the mind the way a blade cleaned a wound.

“Thanks for all,” He slipped the ring away with care, the motion deliberate, controlled. The small act of restraint, choosing not to inspect the gift, read as manners on the surface, but the tightness in his fingers suggested he didn’t fully trust what he’d been given, or what it might cost later.

“It is me who should express my thanks, Ludwig, and young prince of the empire. This forest shall no longer be locked down, and time will return to it soon. Farewell young ones,” The words came with the calm weight of a decree. Her shimmer brightened once, and then she was gone, not with drama, not with wind, just absent, like a sentence ending mid-word and no one daring to question it.

The group stood in the hut which also soon began changing.

For a heartbeat they remained still, as though expecting her to reappear, as though motion might be interpreted as disrespect. The air felt different without her, less soft, more ordinary, and even the silence had changed texture.

As if thousands of years seemed to assault this place, the whole cabin began degrading, aging, the wood of the walls and ceiling began crumpling and molding over, then rotted and turned all to dust.