Updated Apr 13, 2026 • ~7 min read
Chapter 13: Tomorrow
The Collector
The Collector watches Sage Thornwood through a scrying mirror that cost three witch lives to enchant, and they feel something that might be anticipation or might be hunger or might be the closest thing to excitement that someone like them can still experience after two hundred years of existence.
She’s gotten stronger. That’s evident in the way her magic flows now—more controlled than it was five years ago, more focused, the raw grief-power refined into something sharp and deliberate. The wards around her apartment would challenge most practitioners, and the protective spells she’s layered over herself are impressive for someone so young.
The Collector is almost proud. Almost.
“Look at you,” they murmur to the image in the mirror, watching Sage pour over grimoires in her apartment, the human curse-breaker sleeping on her couch like a guard dog who doesn’t realize he’s useless. “You’ve been preparing. Good. It’ll make taking you so much sweeter.”
Four acquisitions completed. Four witches drained and added to the collection, their power now humming in vials on the Collector’s shelves—protection magic, elemental water, elemental fire, and divination. A nice variety, building toward the ritual’s requirements, but still incomplete.
Five more needed. Then Sage.
The Collector moves away from the scrying mirror and crosses to their ritual chamber, where the circle waits, partially activated, glowing faintly with stolen magic. The collected power is already integrated into the working—centuries of witch magic layered one upon another, a patchwork of stolen lives that’s kept Nathaniel Thorne alive far longer than any human was meant to exist.
But the ritual is degrading. The Collector can feel it in their bones—or what passes for bones, because two hundred years of magical transformation has left them only partially corporeal, more entity than person, held together by stolen power and stubborn refusal to die.
They’re running out of time.
The last version of the ritual lasted thirty years before needing reinforcement. This one is failing after only five, which means the degradation is accelerating, which means they need to complete the next iteration soon or risk dissolution.
The Collector refuses to dissolve. Refuses to become nothing after surviving for two centuries. They’ve sacrificed too much, become too much, to simply fade away now.
Sage Thornwood’s power will fix everything.
The Collector pulls out their notes—decades of research into hereditary magic, into the Thornwood bloodline specifically, into why that family’s power is so potent, so pure, so perfect for what the ritual requires.
Seven generations of witches, each one training the next, each one adding to a magical legacy that’s practically crystallized in Sage’s blood. When the Collector takes her—and they will take her, have always been planning to take her, have been patient in ways that only immortals can afford to be patient—her power won’t just sustain the ritual, it’ll perfect it.
True immortality. Not this half-life sustained by constant harvesting, but actual permanence, freedom from the degradation cycle, from the desperate hunt every few decades.
The Collector will finally be complete.
A chime sounds—a ward signaling that someone is approaching their sanctuary—and the Collector feels irritation flicker because they don’t appreciate interruptions, especially not during planning phases.
They move through their house to the entrance wards and find a witch standing outside, young and nervous and emanating enough fear to make the Collector smile.
“I have information,” the witch says, voice shaking. “About the Thornwood investigation. You said you’d pay for information.”
The Collector did indeed establish informants throughout the magical community—easy enough when you offer money and protection and carefully don’t mention that informants sometimes become acquisitions when their usefulness expires.
“Speak,” the Collector commands.
“Sage Thornwood has help now,” the informant says. “Another witch arrived yesterday—Morgan Drake from New York, powerful, specializes in combat magic and wards. They’re working together to find you.”
The Collector considers this information, turning it over in their mind like a interesting stone.
Morgan Drake. They know that name, know her reputation, know she used to be involved with Sage before the coven massacre drove Sage into isolation.
An additional complication, but not a significant one.
“They’re planning a binding ritual,” the informant continues, eagerly offering more in hopes of payment. “Modified from historical methods, designed to trap you while preventing power absorption. They think they can contain you the way the original Salem coven did.”
The Collector laughs, and the sound makes the informant flinch.
“They think to bind me,” the Collector muses. “How delightfully naive. The Salem coven bound Nathaniel Thorne when he was barely fifty years old and had absorbed only seventeen witches. I’ve had two centuries to accumulate power and knowledge. Any binding they attempt will fail.”
But still. It’s concerning that they’ve figured out the historical connection, that they’re researching countermeasures, that Sage is gathering allies instead of isolating herself in fear.
The Collector makes a decision.
“Time to send a message,” they say, not really talking to the informant anymore. “Something to remind dear Sage exactly how outmatched she is.”
“What kind of message?” the informant asks nervously.
The Collector looks at them properly for the first time, really looks, and notices the magical signature—earth magic, mid-level power, nothing particularly special but useful enough for the ritual’s requirements.
“You’ll be the message,” the Collector says, and moves before the witch can run.
The absorption takes only minutes—the Collector has perfected the process over two centuries, can drain a witch dry without wasting a drop of power—and when it’s done, there’s a new vial on the shelf and a void where the informant used to exist.
Five acquisitions complete. Five more, then Sage.
The timeline is accelerating, which is risky but necessary, and the Collector decides to embrace the risk because safety is boring and they’ve been careful for too long.
They return to the scrying mirror and focus on Sage again, on the apartment where she’s now awake and working with both the human and Morgan Drake, three investigators who think they’re hunting the Collector when really the Collector is hunting them.
“Enjoy your planning,” the Collector whispers. “Enjoy your allies and your research and your hope that you can stop me. It’ll make your despair so much more delicious when I prove you wrong.”
They watch Oliver Reyes—the human who thinks he can protect Sage with his trace magic and his stubborn optimism—and the Collector considers killing him first, making Sage watch, using her grief as a weapon against her.
But no. Better to let her keep him for now. Let her develop attachments, let her start to hope for futures that include him, let her care.
And then the Collector will take everything.
They’ve been doing this for two hundred years. They know that the best way to break someone isn’t through pain—it’s through loss.
The Collector will take Oliver, then Morgan, then any other allies Sage manages to gather.
And then, when she’s alone and devastated and reminded of exactly why she isolated herself in the first place, the Collector will take Sage Thornwood, will drain every drop of her beautiful hereditary power, and will finally achieve the transcendence they’ve been working toward for two centuries.
The scrying mirror shows Sage laughing at something Oliver said, and the Collector commits the image to memory because they want to remember what joy looks like on her face—it’ll make destroying it so much sweeter.
“Soon,” the Collector promises, touching the glass of the mirror. “Very soon now, little witch. And when I come for you, you’ll finally understand that survival was never mercy—it was just me saving the best for last.”
They turn away from the mirror and return to preparing the next acquisition, the next step, the next move in a game that Sage Thornwood doesn’t even realize she’s already lost.
The Collector has patience and power and two hundred years of experience.
Sage has hope and allies and determination.
It’s not going to be enough.
It’s never enough.
The Collector smiles, alone in their sanctuary, surrounded by vials of stolen magic and the echoes of two centuries of screams, and begins planning their endgame.
Reader Reactions