The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis

The gates of the palace were far behind them now.

Zhao Xinying didn't know how long she'd been walking—only that the stone roads had long since given way to packed dirt, and the frost was beginning to bite through the soles of her boots. Her breath curled visibly in the air, but she wasn't cold. Not really. Not in any way that mattered.

Behind her, Shi Yaozu walked without speaking, his footsteps measured and quiet, matching her pace without ever overtaking it. Shadow padded farther back still, so silent he might have disappeared into the treeline. But she could feel both of them. Two steady presences at her back. One made of blade and loyalty, the other of teeth and old blood.

Neither asked where they were going.

Because neither of them needed to.

The sky overhead had shifted from slate to bruised gray, and a thin sheen of ice glittered across the ridgeline. In another life, she might have thought it beautiful.

But her eyes weren't on the sky.

They were on the child who had just appeared at her side, walking half a step behind her.

He hadn't said a word since entering the capital. Not during the initial physician's examination. Not when Mingyu personally ordered quarters prepared. Not even when they brought him warm food and dry shoes. His silence wasn't stubborn. It wasn't even afraid. It was simply… final.

As if the world had already broken something in him too deeply to fix.

She hadn't pressed. She never did.

But she watched him now—his ragged sleeves still too long for his arms, the hem of his trousers stiff with old dirt and snowmelt. He never looked up. Not even once. But he kept following.

She'd started calling him Li Wei days ago, the name slipping unbidden from her lips when she looked at him. She hadn't corrected herself. Hadn't bothered to ask his real name. What did it matter? The boy never responded anyway.

But now, walking across the ridgeline just outside the capital—far from politics, from war councils, from Mingyu's sharp gaze—she let herself think about the name.

Let herself remember the real Lin Wei.

Twelve years ago, he had been the first to see her.

Not as a devil or a god. Not as a legend stitched into whispered tales. But as a girl. A protector. A shadowed figure who stood between his village and a battalion of soldiers… and won.

He was the one who told the others she was real. That he had seen her with his own eyes. They laughed at him, then ignored him—but he had believed. He used to follow her at a distance, sneaking offerings of stolen fruit to the edge of the trees, whispering his loyalty to the wind.

She never thanked him.

She never thought she needed to.

But she remembered his face now. The sharp lines of a child still growing into his limbs, his eyes too wide for his cheeks, his voice high and earnest when he told the others: She saved us.

Lin Wei believed she was more than a rumor. And in return, she had let him believe he could protect her.

It was a foolish trade. A child's dream.

And yet—

She turned her head slightly, her gaze flicking toward the boy behind her.

He looked nothing like Lin Wei.

Too small. Too thin. The wrong shape to his jaw. And yet the silence was the same. The kind of silence that came from watching something die.

He had told her, back in the mountains, that his sister had dragged him through the trees when the soldiers came. That she went back for something—her herbs, he'd said. Hers. And she never returned.

She hadn't asked for more.

She didn't need to.

The moment he said that, she had known.

They were all dead.

Not just the girl. Not just the sick and the elderly. The entire village.

Village Chief Zhou Cunzhang. The man who once stood between her and the outside world, grumbling about her temper and her tongue, but never turning her away.

The healer woman who sent herbs to the mountain in secret.

The old man who carefully crafted a collar for Shadow even thought the wolf refused to wear it.

And Lin Wei—her first friend in this world, whether she wanted to admit it or not.

None of them had survived.

She'd suspected it when the first western scouts arrived. She knew it when Baiguang and Chixia formed their alliance and marched together. But she didn't feel it… not until now.

Not until the boy behind her stopped walking.

Xinying paused and looked back.

He was standing perfectly still, his hands at his sides, his chin low. His boots were soaked from crossing the last creek, and his scarf—one of hers—had loosened at the neck. But his face hadn't changed. Not even a tremble. Only his eyes.

They were looking at her.

Not past her. Not at Yaozu or the ridge or the animal tracks leading into the trees.

At her.

Just like Lin Wei had.

The wind cut across the cliff's edge, scattering dry pine needles over the stone, but she didn't move. And neither did he.

"You should go back," she said, voice quiet. "There's a room waiting. And food."

He didn't answer.

Her throat tightened.

"I'll come back," she added. "Not soon. But I will."

Still nothing.

Behind her, she felt Yaozu shift his weight slightly. In situations like this, he wouldn't speak unless she asked him to, and she didn't. This wasn't his moment to carry.

It was hers.

She turned back to the boy fully.

And then she dropped to one knee.

"I wasn't there," she said softly. "When it happened. I wasn't there to stop it. And I don't expect you to understand what I'm about to do… but I will stop it from happening again."

He blinked once.

She reached out—slowly—and tucked the scarf closer to his throat.

"I couldn't save the village," she murmured. "But I'll save you."

That word caught in her mouth.

Not them.

Not all of you.

Just him.

The last piece left of a place that no longer existed.

The boy didn't speak. But he didn't turn away, either.

It was enough.

She stood again, her legs stiff, and stepped back. Shadow came to her side without prompting, his yellow eyes flicking toward the child and then ahead.

"Yaozu," she said.

"Yes."

"Make sure he gets back."

"I will."

She didn't look again.

She couldn't.

Instead, she turned toward the east ridgeline—the one that overlooked the narrow pass between provinces. It was from there she would begin. Not just the next march, but the end of it all. The moment that would make Baiguang kneel or burn. She had already poisoned their rivers. Already collapsed their supply chains. But now… it needed to end.

Apparently, they needed a symbol, something bigger to let them know that they had lost.

So she would give them one.

The woman they tried to turn into a ghost.

The girl they should have never touched.

Zhao Xinying walked toward the edge.

And didn't look back.