The Vatra Witch

  Book One: The Lost Souls of Eraphon Series

  G.V. Hext

  Poppy and June Press LLC

  Copyright © 2026 by G.V. Hext

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

  The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

  Book Cover by Alex McLaughlin at Nox Studios

  Editing by Elyse Lyon

  First edition 2026

  Contents

  Content Warning

  Map

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  15. Chapter 15

  16. Chapter 16

  17. Chapter 17

  18. Chapter 18

  19. Chapter 19

  20. Chapter 20

  21. Chapter 21

  22. Chapter 22

  23. Chapter 23

  24. Chapter 24

  25. Chapter 25

  26. Chapter 26

  27. Chapter 27

  28. Chapter 28

  29. Chapter 29

  30. Chapter 30

  31. Chapter 31

  32. Chapter 32

  33. Chapter 33

  34. Chapter 34

  35. Chapter 35

  36. Chapter 36

  37. Chapter 37

  38. Chapter 38

  39. Chapter 39

  40. Chapter 40

  41. Chapter 41

  42. Chapter 42

  43. Chapter 43

  44. Chapter 44

  45. Chapter 45

  46. Chapter 46

  47. Chapter 47

  48. Chapter 48

  49. Chapter 49

  50. Chapter 50

  51. Chapter 51

  52. Chapter 52

  53. Chapter 53

  54. Chapter 54

  55. Chapter 55

  56. Chapter 56

  57. Chapter 57

  58. Chapter 58

  59. Chapter 59

  60. Chapter 60

  61. Chapter 61

  62. Chapter 62

  63. Chapter 63

  64. Chapter 64

  65. Chapter 65

  66. Chapter 66

  67. Chapter 67

  68. Chapter 68

  69. Chapter 69

  70. Chapter 70

  71. Chapter 71

  72. Chapter 72

  73. Chapter 73

  74. Chapter 74

  75. Chapter 75

  76. Chapter 76

  77. Chapter 77

  Epilogue

  Pronunciation Guide

  Chapter

  Acknowledgements

  Content Warning

  Please visit GVHext.com for a complete list of content warnings.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my husband, and to those who never thought they were good enough.

  I promise you are.

  Chapter one

  Seraphina

  All she saw were their small bodies burning.

  Children, their faces dirty, their screams joyfully shrill under the hot sun, were burning one moment, and normal the next. Ablaze in black flame while kicking up dust in plumes. Then laughing while they dueled each other with stalks of straw for the honorary rank of Mesar.

  It wanted them to burn.

  Seraphina Wildrick leaned against the corner of the weathered notice board in the middle of Jedan Quarter. The graying wood groaned beside her as she pressed her thumbnail so hard into the center of her palm that she shook.

  The elixirs were barely working anymore.

  Now the only thing to suppress the abomination within her was pressure points or pain. And Sera would rather let Jedan Quarter burn—with its dilapidated buildings and less-than-level roofs—than look like an idiot with her thumb pressed between her eyes in front of a mass of children on their way to Darine Hall.

  So pain it was, and she sank her nail deeper.

  “Excuse me, Keeper Wildrick?” A young witch tugged on her cloak. “Mama told me to give you this.”

  The girl held up a white rose.

  Sera turned to face her. “I don’t know who your mother is.” The girl’s warm brown skin was washed in freckles, not so unlike her own when she was a witchling.

  “She said you might say that. Anyway, she told me to give you this and to say thank you.”

  A flash, and the girl was alight. Her mouth open in a scream, her hair curling in flame.

  Sera blinked away the image.

  “Your mother has nothing to thank me for.” Sera lowered herself to her haunches and broke off the thorns and half the stem. She pushed the rose behind the young witch’s ear. “You keep it. Go on, you’ll be late.”

  The witchling beamed at her and hurried to catch up to her classmates. Such a young little thing. Her whole world was in front of her, if she was lucky enough.

  Sera stood and observed the new bartering posters crowding the notice board. So many. There were so many who were in need, and what did the Council do?

  Nothing.

  Darkness surged under her palms, begging her to devour the poorly constructed buildings. The papery silber bark they used in the slums would all go up in a matter of seconds. A voice deep in Sera’s mind asked her, Why not let them burn?

  The upper classes avoided this part of the white city as if it were a disease.

  Jedan class wasn’t afflicted. They were born with shallow wells.

  Sera ripped one of the pleas from the board, folded it, and shoved it deep into the pocket of her navy cloak. Later this evening, she’d supply this family with whatever they needed.

  It’d be her penance for envisioning their children burning.

  “Hello, beautiful,” Dominick called out, jogging toward her. His floor-length gray oracle robes fluttered behind him. The reddened bags under his eyes against pale skin made them twice as blue, and his light blond hair was tousled in a way only rolling in a bed could achieve.

  “I hope your tryst was fun. Galene’s going to shrink me and lock me in one of her glass cabinets if I’m late again.” Sera charged toward the center of the Citadel.

  Dominick smiled, quickening his gait to match hers. “And you’ll look so adorable as a figurine.”

  “Easy for you to say.” She sank into the weight of his arm around her shoulders, grateful that the rattling inside her was finally beginning to calm.

  “Moons, you’ve been so cranky lately. When was the last time you got laid?” he asked, shaking the Jedan dust from his hem. “Not counting that magical appendage you keep under your mattress, that is.”

  She smirked. “That’s none of your business.”

  “I’m wounded. It’s absolutely my business. Otherwise, what’s the point of being best friends? Didn’t you go on a date two nights ago?”

  “I canceled it.”

  They crossed the quarter line and stepped from dirt onto the cobblestones of Dobro Quarter. The buildings went from shacks to stone constructions with perlin beams and thatched roofs, and the sweet aroma of cinnamon and sugar from the bakeries and shops at the ground level perfumed the air. Sera’s stomach growled. She’d forgotten to eat… again.

  “Why?” Dominick asked.

  Slipping out from under his arm, she rubbed the damp from her brow and picked up the pace toward Darine Hall. “Because after the tenth time he brought up his mother on the last date, I decided it was never going to work.”

  Dominick opened his mouth, then closed it again and shrugged. “Can’t really fight with that logic.”

  She raised her dark brow at him in surprise. She’d expected he would shove another one of his friends in her path. Someone broody, maybe, or like the last few—pretty to look at, but dumber than the gulls. Regardless, Dominick wasn’t the kind to give up.

  “Oh”—he chuckled—“I have to tell you about Sam last night…”

  They turned toward Citadel proper, and Sera stopped short.

  A Congratulations, novices banner, painted in perfect looping script, swayed lazily in the breeze above them. Decorative bows and ribbons correlating to the colors of the robes the different occupations wore bedecked each of the posts and balconies toward Darine Hall. Joyous coven members kissed their lead novices goodbye and wished them luck on their trial day.

  She ignored Dominick’s prattling about his rambunctiou
s evening, which involved positions she hadn’t even considered, and stared up at the banners.

  The day had finally come, and as much as she wanted to be happy for her baby sister, Sera had been dreading it.

  “Are you listening to me? I said that he screeched like a gull.”

  “Sorry, Dom.”

  Dominick followed her gaze and huffed. “It’s been almost four years. You’re still not over it?”

  “No.”

  Each banner they passed under squeezed a little more life from her lungs. Every jovial remark and colorful bow or wreath made her sweat. It didn’t help that she and Dominick had discussed this dozens of times.

  “You made Dobro, what does it matter now?”

  “It matters,” she said, pulling her cloak tight around her shoulders like a shield, and followed the crowd of coven members toward Darine Hall. All while Dominick shuffled behind.

  If it were any other day, she’d longingly admire the stunning white buildings with stone arches at every entrance. She’d appreciate the massive domes with their golden-dipped spires piercing the sky.

  She’d think to herself about the time she told her little sister Nora that the reason they needed the spikes was that without them, monstrous birds would claim the tops of their buildings and rain shit around them.

  But this was not the day.

  Sera crossed the white marble entrance of Darine Hall and stepped into the vast courtyard. The blue wisteria, heavy with blooms, wove its vines around the third-level balcony spindles. The florals draped the walls, showering the lead novices congregating in the gardens below with stray petals, making the air sickeningly sweet.

  So many white robes.

  The look of them all sent a chill up her spine. Sera ran her fingernails back and forth across her palm and surveilled the clusters of novices, seeking her sister, when Dominick finally caught up. “Do you see Nora?”

  He extended to the tips of his toes. “I don’t think she’s here yet.”

  Sera frowned. Her sister should have already arrived. It was unlike her to be late to anything. “I’ll try and catch her before they line up. Meet me in the Menage later?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Dominick said, then waved to a handsome warlock across the courtyard—his latest obsession. Sera didn’t anticipate it lasting long.

  They never did.

  Soon, most likely in the next week or two, Dominick would make the excuse that he was bored. She knew, deep down, that anytime someone got a little too close, a little too comfortable, Dominick would run in the other direction.

  She shook her head.

  Moons, she was miserable. Not that Sera would ever admit it, but maybe he was right. Maybe she did need to get laid. Shadow knew she needed a good distraction—a good distraction and a decent night’s sleep.

  Her legs burned with each step up to the designated Dobro floor. The middle level of Darine Hall wasn’t as opulent as the Daedeth floor above it, but it was still lovely. Every day, she followed the same path, passing the gold letters stamped into crisp white stone: Keepers of the Artifacts.

  The clacking of fellow keepers’ boots faded away as she beheld her name painted on the wooden door.

  Sera loved her placement. Each new artifact satiated her curious mind. The texts were like windows into lives so unlike her own. They held knowledge about the rise and fall of empires that had collapsed long before her.

  The texts proved that the demon race had ruled over witches and warlocks since the dawn of time until the rebellion.

  And yet every morning as she walked through the door in front of her—with her name emblazoned in gold under her position of junior keeper—a bittersweet stone settled in her chest. An unpleasant reminder of how her mother had petitioned the Council to move her from the position of a Glom witch in Jedan to that of a keeper in Dobro.

  How, after her first solo assignment, she’d needed her mother to cover up her disaster.

  If she had been left to rot in Jedan, then none of it would have happened.

  Blazing flame warmed the cage she kept around that dangerous well of magic. It writhed and pressed against the walls she’d built. Sera leaned her head against the door, trying to blink away the spots racing across her vision.

  The abomination surged in defiant answer. As if it were screaming at her: How dare you keep me caged.

  Her lungs burned against the bubbling well of unchecked magic. A second well. One she was never supposed to have.

  Sera pressed hard into the pressure points on her wrists. The one between her eyebrows, then below her ears, and the rattling subsided a bit. Though she was grateful to the healer who had taught her this move, Sera still felt guilty about the lie she had told to learn it.

  It wasn’t anxiety that rolled through her.

  It was death.

  Chapter two

  Seraphina

  Sera was late, and this time she couldn’t blame it on Dominick. With Nora’s trial looming over her and the constant rattling in her chest, Sera sighed. Just don’t burn the stacks down. The door handle was cool in her scorching hand. She envisioned herself locking the chains, hiding that well of death once again. One more deep breath.

  Sera pushed open the door to her workspace.

  The signature fragrance of time and dust helped calm her a little, but knowing she was in a room with ancient relics and tomes had her biting her cheek to keep her magic in check.

  Surrounding the worktables, stone walls held shelving, and upon it ancient masks, globes, and broken bottles. Mage lights danced across the ceiling. Half were back in the stacks, most likely following her mentor, but the remaining ones perched above the wooden tables reflected their light in the golden-framed mirror at the front of the room.

  “Seraphina?”

  “It’s me,” she yelled back, noticing the ledgers from the previous day were still stacked at her workstation. Sera sighed. Apparently, for Galene to have miraculously changed her assignment during the night was too much to ask. The ledgers often held endless counts of livestock and crop yields: hardly exciting.

  “Come back here, please.” Galene’s voice was strained. Sera swung her cloak from her shoulders, hung it on the back of the door, and went to find her mentor.

  Her fingertips snagged on the rough bindings and spines as she walked back into the stacks. The distinct scent of vanillin permeated the pages of ancient tomes and ledgers, settling the last bit of her magic back inside its cage. And finally, Sera let her shoulders drop.

  Tomes and more tomes. It’d been tomes forever. As a witchling, huddled in the library, looking at the monstrous beast forms of demons. Reading about the ancient sacrificial rituals of witches and warlocks. The wars, the mythical beasts that dwelled deep in Eraphon’s oceans.

  But the one she’d wanted to get her hands on since the moment she set foot within these stacks was protected behind glass. Weathered and moth eaten, its delicate leather cover depicted the world giving birth to a god. Sera had begged Galene to read it countless times, but the answer was always a firm no.

  “Seraphina, stop feeling the books and come help me,” Galene crowed at her. “Grab the stool and bring it here. The Vase of Ornelle is waiting.”

  “Considering that it’s over two thousand years old, I don’t think another few minutes are going to hurt it.” Sera grabbed the stool and faced her mentor.

  Galene’s short stature, beady eyes, and white hair that never seemed to stay in place made her look gnomelike. She retrieved the artifact and delicately placed it onto a secured transport cart.

  “You”—her mentor glared at her—“are the safest solution for retrieving items on the higher shelves, due to your height.” Galene waved her hands, whispering a spell, and further secured the vase with magic. “It is why I have let you stay so long.”

  Sera snorted. “You’re not sprite-sized.”

  “I still believe you taller witches have access to better air quality than I do. I should petition the Council about that.”

  “I think you’re just afraid of heights.” Sera laughed, pushing her heavy black curls off her shoulder and returning to her workstation.

  “That comment doesn’t warrant a response,” Galene said.

  Sera readied her notebook and opened the top ledger.

  Crudely drawn creatures coated the pages—on one, depictions of woodland goblins with their giant eyes and even bigger ears. On another, the mighty elken with their massive antlers. A pleasant surprise considering she was expecting tallies of crop yields and livestock.