I opened my eyes and found myself lying in the heart of the blackthorn woods, only to realize I had fainted after my transformation. My body felt heavy, but I gathered all my strength to rise and make my way home.

As I walked back, every villager I passed froze in their steps. Their stares pierced me like knives, and the distance they kept told me everything—they no longer saw me as one of them. To them, I was no longer Bhairavi. I was something else. Something to be feared.

Leave it.

When I finally reached home, my mother’s reaction shook me even more than the villagers’. She acted as if nothing had changed. She came close, kissed my forehead gently, and whispered, “Happy Birthday, beta. Mujhe pata hai tere man mein bahut saare sawal honge. Mere paas unke jawab hain… bas pehle jaa ke tu naha le. Aaj bahut khaas din hai. Aaj humein teri maha-pūjan vidhi karni hai.”

My legs trembled, my back ached, and weakness clung to my bones, but I obeyed her. After bathing, I returned, only to hear a truth that shattered my soul.

The man I had once thought of as great was no hero. He was a predator—our family’s enemy—who had once tried to take advantage of my grandmother.

Oh, let me tell you about her. My grandmother’s name was Mrignāyinī. As her name suggests, her eyes shimmered with the beauty of a golden deer, and her aura was playful, free, and gentle—just like the deer that frolic under the sun. She was never an evil witch. She was the healer, the protector, the heartbeat of this village.

But beauty does not always inspire worship. Sometimes, it awakens hunger in cruel men. One such man was Rudra Singh’s father—Abhay Singh. The day he laid eyes on her, fate turned black.

Abhay Singh was not a man of honor; he was a beast wrapped in power. The first time he laid eyes on my grandmother, he disguised his hunger behind sweet words. He came to her with false respect, proposing marriage as if her beauty was a prize to be claimed.

But Mrignāyinī was not a jewel for display. She was fire wrapped in gentleness, a protector of her people, and she rejected him without hesitation.

Rejection turned his desire into venom. The mask slipped, and the predator beneath was revealed. When she denied him again, he forced himself on her. She fought, she cried, she screamed until her voice cracked, but there was no one to save her. And in the end, when her body gave in, she lay broken on the ground—half-dead, her spirit trembling on the edge of despair.

But fate had more cruelty left. The villagers, poisoned by Abhay Singh’s power and blinded by fear, did not come to her aid. Instead, they turned against her. They called her cursed. They accused her of inviting the beast herself. And in their rage and ignorance, they tried to tear her apart—her skin, her dignity, her very soul.

It was then, in her last breath of strength, that Mrignāyinī did what no one expected. She called upon the shadows, whispered an ancient chant, and summoned a Pishāch—a spirit of the dark, hungry and loyal only to her pain.

The earth trembled as the creature rose, its eyes glowing like burning coals. It lashed out at the mob, its growls drowning their screams, and shielded her with a terror greater than their hate. In that moment, she was no longer their healer, no longer their saint—she was something else. Something they could not destroy.

The Pishāch carried her away into the blackthorn forest, its claws slicing the air, its breath heavy with vengeance. And that night, under the bleeding moon, the curse was born.

That night, when the Pishāch carried Mrignāyinī into the blackthorn woods, her body was broken—but her spirit was sharper than ever. She pressed her palms into the soil, her blood seeping into the roots, and cried out—not to gods, not to men, but to the forest itself.

The blackthorn answered.

The thorns around her pulsed, their tips glowing faintly red, drinking her rage like nectar. Her tears turned the earth bitter, and the air thickened with a vow that was neither prayer nor plea—it was vengeance.

Her curse was simple in words, but endless in reach:

"Let no daughter of my bloodline live in peace. Let her beauty be her burden, her love be her torment, her touch be feared as poison. The forest shall be her cradle and her coffin. And those who betrayed me, their sons and their sons’ sons, will know ruin in her shadow. The cycle shall not break until the debt is paid in blood."

And so it was.

From that night on, the blackthorn forest grew hungrier. Its whispers turned sharp, its paths twisting. Villagers who once mocked her began to vanish at its edges. Fields withered under her silent grief. Babies born in her bloodline carried a mark invisible to all but the cursed—restlessness in their veins, fire in their hearts, and a beauty too sharp to be human.

The curse was not death. It was worse.
It was life lived under the weight of suspicion, isolation, and desire twisted into danger. Every generation of women born from her would carry both gift and punishment: the power to heal, and the hunger for revenge.

The blackthorn had become our throne, our prison, and our crown of thorns.

And Mrignāyinī? She rose from her suffering to become the kind of queen people feared, desired, and whispered about for centuries—the Queen of Blackthorn Witches.

And now… I finally have my answers.

I am her successor. I am the heir of the blackthorn lineage.

Let this village see what it costs to wound a woman so deeply, so cruelly.
Rudra Singh—you’ve lived too long, too happily, drowning in luxuries built on blood. You thought your sins were buried with time. But time has teeth.

Now, you will know. You will taste what despair feels like when your soul is burning, when your laughter dies in your throat, when your heaven crumbles into ash.

Because I will make sure of it.

I’ll turn your heaven into my hell.

Be ready.