I always knew it would end this way.

  Not the details—never the details—but the shape of it: a stake, a rope biting into my wrists, the stench of pitch, the heat that waits like a patient executioner. For years the knowledge rotted quietly in some hidden chamber of my mind, whispering that all roads, no matter how lovingly walked, would eventually lead here. And now, with my feet planted in a bed of kindling and my body trembling against a dead tree’s spine, the whisper becomes prophecy fulfilled.

  I have no tears left to offer the world that condemns me. Grief dried me hollow long before these people dragged me screaming through the mud. I stand emptied—of hope, of voice, of anything that could tether me to life—yet the body still quakes with terror. The body always betrays itself in the end. Acceptance may have lodged itself in my heart months ago, but fear… fear pours through me like boiling water, filling every fissure, every bone.

  The crowd presses close, a swollen creature made of a thousand snarling faces. They chant for my downfall with a hunger that disgusts even the flames. Not one of them has known me—my hands, my heart, the quiet life I built in the little cottage by the willow tree grove. They cheer because they have been told to, because their empty souls crave blood to make them feel righteous. They do not wonder where my daughter is, or what became of her small, shaking hands as they tore her from me. Or was she taken? Did she escape? My memory—scorched by fear—cannot hold the truth. All I know is that I screamed for her to run. I do not know if she listened. I will die long before I find out.

  If death is merciful—and I doubt that it is.

  I try to look upon my murderers. I try to search their eyes for some sliver of humanity I can cling to before the pain devours me, but theirs are eyes carved out of stone and filled with stale hatred. They have long since traded their souls for the comfort of conformity. Their insults crash over me like a storm, crude and sharp, as if naming me “witch” makes me less than human and them something more.

  A man steps forward—though man feels too generous a word. He is a vessel for rot wearing a face. He raises a torch to the sky, basking in the mob’s delight as if he were savior, hero, saint. The fire reflects in his gaze like a crown made of ruin. It is he who will deliver the flame to my feet, he who will brand me with an ending I did not earn.

  I try to cry out—to curse them, to plead for my daughter, to ask the gods why I was chosen—but my throat is ragged, a desolate place where screams once lived. I am a silent thing now. A shadow about to be erased.

  Time folds in on itself. Seconds stretch thin, slow, unbearable. The torch descends, and the world holds its breath.

  The fire catches with a gasp.

  The first curl of heat licks at my ankles. Pain blooms like a monstrous flower—petal upon petal—unfurling across my skin. I jerk against my bindings, instinct clawing through terror, but the ropes hold firm. The crowd’s cheers batter my ears until they dull into a low, revolting hum. My heartbeat pounds against my ribs as though trying to tear free and flee without me.

  I scramble against the rising blaze, contorting my body in senseless desperation, as if movement could change the destiny written beneath my feet. This humiliation—the frantic flailing of a doomed insect—fills me with a shame so sharp I can taste it. They want me to look monstrous. They want me to be the demon that justifies their cruelty.

  No mercy will come. I knew this before they dragged me from my home. I knew it when they tied the rope. I know it now as the skin on my legs begins to blister and peel, a grotesque offering to their appetite.

  Smoke swallows the air. Ash coats my tongue. My vision swims, darkens, distorts. I breathe fire with each panicked gasp, and every breath slices me from within. I beg—silently, inwardly—for death to hurry, for the pain to crack me open and let the world swallow me whole.

  But death is deliberate tonight. It savors.

  Who do these people imagine themselves to be? Heroes ornamented in virtue? Saints forged in divine right? They sit high above the bloodshed, deciding with sickening leisure who among us deserves to breathe and who must be sacrificed to keep their fragile order intact. They call themselves judge, jury, executioner—roles they wear like crowns stolen from the heavens.

  Why must I burn? What crime is worse than existing differently from them? Is it my knowledge? My face? My voice? The way I tended herbs? The way my daughter laughed? Or is it simply the boredom of the powerful—the idle cruelty that festers in those who will never face punishment for wielding fear as a weapon?

  Flames twist up the frayed hem of my dress, devouring fabric with eager mouths. My legs scream beneath blistering heat. It feels as though invisible hands are clawing me open, tearing at flesh that once held warmth and life.

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  This is a nightmare. It must be. No dream could be so vivid, so scorching, so real—yet I cannot wake, cannot tear myself from the grip of my fate.

  The fire climbs higher. My mind fractures at the edges.

  The last sound I manage—a rasping, broken whisper—is my daughter’s name.

  May she live. May this agony not be wasted. May she run far beyond the reach of men who burn women to soothe their own fear.

  And as the fire rises, consuming the sky, I realize I have never felt more alive in my hatred.

  The fire does not remain at my feet for long. Flames are greedy things—they climb, reaching with fingers of molten gold that curl around my calves, press into the soft underside of my knees, and drag their blistering tongues across me as though tasting a final meal. I try to twist away, but the rope cuts deeper into my wrists, biting bone. A pathetic sound gurgles up my throat, something between a sob and a gasp, but even that feels stolen by the air thick with smoke.

  My skin tightens, stretches, splits. It feels as though the fire is unravelling me thread by thread, undoing the very seams that hold my body together. The pain is so total, so enveloping, that it becomes impossible to tell where I end and the flames begin. I am no longer a woman. I am a wick.

  My vision pulses with the heat. Shapes blur at the edges—faces melting together in an indistinguishable mass of hatred and open mouths. Their jeers twist into howls, their howls into laughter, their laughter into something monstrous and inhuman. Perhaps it has always been that way. Perhaps I simply could not hear it before through the illusion that humans were something other than beasts.

  A sudden memory slashes through the haze—my daughter’s small hands gripping mine as we dug for herbs after rain, her voice bright as she asked why the earth smelled different when wet. I had told her it meant the soil was alive, and she laughed and said the earth was singing.

  What would she think now, watching the earth sing a dirge beneath her mother?

  I cough. The motion rips my lungs. Charcoal and agony flood my mouth. My head droops forward as if even my bones begin to melt.

  Someone in the crowd shouts a word—“Confess!”—and the mob echoes it, a gnarled chorus demanding repentance for sins I never committed. How convenient, how easy, for them to summon forgiveness only when it serves to justify their cruelty. Even if I confessed a thousand untruths, even if I begged on shattered knees, still they would burn me. The fire was lit long before the torch touched wood.

  A crack splits the air. It takes me a moment to understand it is my own voice—raw, torn, breaking. I do not form words. I simply cry out, a sound dragged from deep within, something primal and feral. A final protest against the inevitability of the end.

  The flames reach my waist. Heat wraps itself around my stomach like a molten shroud. The smoke chokes out shapes of memory—my daughter crawling into my bed after nightmares, the warmth of morning sun on the windowsill, the smell of stew simmering in our cottage. These fragments drift before my eyes like moths, fluttering in and out of view before burning away into nothing.

  I want to hold them. I want to hold her. But my hands are bound, and the fire is a thief that grants no final embraces.

  Pain spikes through my ribs so suddenly that for a moment, the world whites out. My breath comes shallow and sharp. The air becomes too thick to swallow. My heart thrashes wildly, not in my chest but in my throat, in my ears, in the very marrow of my bones, as if it seeks any escape—any crack in reality through which it can flee this body of torment.

  I tilt my head back, desperate for air that does not sear my lungs. Above me, the smoke rises like a cathedral’s arch, black and swirling, blotting out the sky. I think—strangely, deliriously—that it looks as though the heavens are being devoured.

  Perhaps they are.

  A tremor shakes me. Not from cold—there is none left in the world—but from the body’s frantic fight against what the soul has already accepted. My knees buckle. My legs, half-cooked and trembling violently, threaten to give way entirely. The rope is the only thing keeping me upright, forcing me to endure each fresh wave of devastation.

  I wish to die.

  I do not whisper it—I will it. A prayer to any god who is not already laughing.

  My mind begins to unravel, thoughts bleeding into one another. Was this truly my fate from birth? Was my daughter’s first breath the beginning of my last? Did the soil beneath our home know, long before I did, that roots planted in peace would someday be torn up in violence?

  The crowd leans closer, their bloodlust thickening the air. Some watch with hunger. Others with glee. A few—very few—look away. But none step forward. None lift a hand. None speak a word that might shatter the ritual of cruelty unfolding before them.

  And then, through the wall of faces, through the blur of smoke and shimmering air, I see him—the man who lit the torch.

  He stands calmly, as though he is observing a simple chore. Flames reflect in the pallor of his features. He does not cheer. He does not jeer. He simply watches, as one might watch a blaze devour dry leaves.

  My vision flickers. The world narrows around him—his face sharp even as everything else melts at the edges.

  Blonde hair. The color of a pale sun.

  Green eyes. The color of wet moss after rain.

  I hold that image—the last human face I will ever see—as the fire rises to claim the rest of me.

  Goodbye, merciless world—your willful ignorance is the only truth you ever clung to, and now it shall be all you have left of me.