The Magistrate counted witches on her fingers and stopped at zero. She stood in her hall of white stone and pink light, the vine-wrapped staff of her office leaning against her chair. By law, only a witch could hold that staff after her. She was old. No young witch in Alcove was ready to take it. If she died this winter, the seat would sit empty, and the laws she had sworn to keep would go with her. She had spent forty years protecting Alcove's quiet. She knew which fence-dispute neighbor was lying and had not yet said so. She remembered rulings she would undo if she could. All of that work would mean nothing with no witch to carry it forward. So she sent for the one person who might know a girl she had missed. The High Councillor arrived without knocking. Her silver hair rose in a tall crest, and her enchanted earrings caught the light as she crossed the floor. She was the oldest ally the Magistrate had, the only person alive who remembered Alcove before its government existed. The two women had built that government together. Few others ever saw them speak as equals. "You have a problem," the High Councillor said. She did not sit. "I have no heir," the Magistrate said. "The staff needs a witch. Name me one. A girl, young, with the gift. Someone I can train before it is too late." The High Councillor studied the leaning staff. Its living vines curled green against the dark oak. She was quiet longer than usual. "There is none," she said. "Not in Alcove. I would know." The Magistrate set both hands flat on her chair. "Then we have no magistrate after me. The law holds the seat for a witch. If there is no witch, there is no court." "I know what the law holds." The High Councillor's voice stayed level. "I helped write it." They looked at each other across the pink-lit floor. Neither spoke of what they both remembered, the thing no one in Alcove was allowed to name. The Magistrate saw the silence settle in her friend's face and understood the answer was final. "Then I will change the law," the Magistrate said. The High Councillor's half-smile faded. "You cannot. The council must agree. I lead the council." "Then I am asking you." "No." The word landed flat and plain. "The witch rule is not a tradition. It is a wall. You know why we built it." She turned toward the door. "Find a witch, or find another way. I will not open that wall." She left. The Magistrate stood alone with the staff and the empty seat it promised. There was no girl to train. There was no law she could change. For the first time in forty years, she did not know who would keep Alcove quiet after her.

The High Councillor's refusal left one question burning. If no witch lived in Alcove now, perhaps one had been hidden long ago. A bloodline could have settled here quietly and gone unrecorded. The Magistrate needed to find where such a family had put down roots. But she had no record pointing to any of them. So she went where the oldest records slept, the council hall with its white walls and soft pink roof. She found a councillor already there, bent over folded papers at a long table. The woman carried the complaints of residents who had waited years for answers. Her lavender twists fell beside her cheeks as she read. The Magistrate knew her as the one councillor who asked the questions others stepped around. That was why she had come to Eskett. "I need the old resident rolls," the Magistrate said. "From the first years after the government began." Eskett set down her papers. "Those are sealed. The High Councillor holds the key." She watched the Magistrate's face. "You don't want to ask her." "No." Eskett was quiet a moment. Then she pulled a thin ledger from the bottom of her stack. "Residents bring me their family troubles. Deeds, marriages, land. I keep copies the council never sees." She slid it across the table. "You're hunting someone. Say who." "A witch family. One that lived here and left no mark in the official books." Eskett's finger stopped on a page. She turned the ledger toward the Magistrate. One entry showed a plot of land passed down for three generations, then abandoned. The last holder's name had been scratched out by hand. Beside it, a note: moved beyond the eastern groves, no heirs declared. "Someone wanted that name gone," Eskett said. "People only scratch out what frightens them." The Magistrate pressed her palm flat on the page. She spoke the nameless spell she had made herself, the one she had never written down. The ink shivered. Under the scratched line, faint letters rose, then the shape of a household, a mother and a daughter with the witch's mark recorded beside their names. The spell faded. The names stayed. The family had been real. The daughter had carried the gift. "There was a bloodline," the Magistrate said. "It did not die out. It was driven out and buried in the books." Eskett closed the ledger slowly. "Then someone chose to hide it. Someone who could reach the sealed rolls." She did not say the name. She did not have to. The Magistrate held the record of a witch family her oldest ally had helped erase. She had her answer and a worse question. The witch blood was not gone from Alcove. It had been hidden on purpose, by someone who had sworn to help her protect the law. Now she had to learn why, before she could find the girl who might still carry it.