This was, without a doubt, the happiest day of Snow's entire existence — spanning decades.
Today, on this island sealed off from the world in the middle of the sea, the most gifted witch the Witch Clan had ever produced had officially claimed the crown of Great Witch of the Wind.
"Great Witch" — a laurel that only the most exceptional witches of each generation could ever prove themselves worthy of.
Since the founding of the Witch Clan, four such laurels had existed: Wind, Earth, Water, and Fire.
And of the four, the thrones of Earth, Water, and Fire had one by one already found their Great Witches.
Only Wind had sat empty for a thousand years — until today.
"Naturally — for the most gifted witch in all of history, claiming the rank of Great Witch is child's play~"
Wind was the most formless of elements, a thing of no substance. Its domain encompassed the most famous of all intangible things: time and space — the most complex and unfathomable forces in heaven and earth.
And beyond that, Snow had studied and mastered the magic of the other three Great Witches — absorbing almost everything they commanded, picking it all up with frightening ease.
Everything, that is, except for the Earth Great Witch's [Causality] — the magic that interfered with and altered the past. Its conditions for activation were simply too extreme. That one had eluded her.
Of course, being the youngest Great Witch the Clan had ever produced, her three seniors had doted on her considerably.
They treated her as the apple of the Clan's eye — something like the little princess of the witches — which meant that outside of magic, her grasp of ordinary life's practicalities was, shall we say, somewhat wanting.
"Phew… I can finally rest."
Snow drifted along the wooden corridors of the Witch Island manor, the day's socializing at an end. She decided to treat herself well. She was so happy today — so happy she wanted to take a warm bath immediately, then go back to her bedroom and roll around on her soft bed a few times.
So she did. Without a second thought, she walked into the bathroom and washed away the fatigue of a full day of being around people.
Warm steam filled the space. In the still-intact mirror, she took herself in.
The girl in the glass had long hair the color of ice, and pale blue eyes as clear as open sky — and Snow found herself marveling that the world could contain something this perfectly made.
The one thing she was slightly dissatisfied with was the figure that remained stubbornly flat even in a cloud of hot steam. Well — probably the universe's way of expressing envy.
She had long since passed the age where things were supposed to develop, and yet somehow nothing had budged. She hadn't grown taller. Hadn't filled out.
She even had to worry about whether the bath towel would slip, given there was so little chest to anchor it to.
"Oh well — there's not a single male fly on all of Witch Island, so figure doesn't even matter. Besides, all that extra weight just gets in the way of casting anyway!"
Snow muttered, slightly petulant, as she toweled her damp hair.
She wasn't wrong, technically. For the Witch Clan, reproduction worked through parthenogenesis — no male companion necessary. A witch who wanted a child would produce a cellular blossom from her own body, which a Great Witch would then use magic to draw in the purest spirit from the natural world, cultivating it into life outside the body.
Of course, if there was no particular reason to have children, most witches simply didn't. Their lifespans were essentially endless — if even a few decided to have children every century or two, the island would overflow.
Reproduction existed to combat the loneliness left by death. But if aging and death were not concerns, the need for it evaporated on its own.
And Great Witches, compared to ordinary witches, were on an even higher tier of life and immortality.
"Hmm~~ hmhm~~"
Snow hummed, heading back to her bedroom, ready to slip under those soft covers and enjoy her first night as a Great Witch.
Click.
She pushed the door open gently.
The floral fragrance of the bath, mixed with the warmth of her skin, poured into the closed room as she moved.
She was still looking down, towel working through her hair.
"Hmhm~~ hmm…?"
Until a voice in a completely unfamiliar register — yet speaking the recognizable language of the witches — reached her ears.
The voice was male. She'd never once encountered a male in her life, but some instinct below thought was certain of it.
Her hands stilled over her hair.
Snow slowly lowered the towel. Through the steam-hazed air, her gaze met a pair of startled, bewildered eyes from across the room.
In her bed — her bed — sat a man.
A young man with a handsome face and a physique so sculpted it might have been carved. A human boy? Or—
A male humanoid lifeform?
The stranger's eyes were fixed on her with rather pointed intensity — she wasn't sure if he was committing the sight of her fresh from the bath to memory or not. It was, frankly, a little rude.
In all her decades of life, she had never once experienced a moment of mental blankness like this.
But before that blankness could harden into something resembling mortified fury, the young man spoke — and the emotion threading through his voice interrupted her entirely.
"Mother?"
Snow: "…Ha?"
The air went dead.
She could hear the wind moving through the trees outside.
First she looked down at her own frame — barely visible under the bath towel, ribs showing at the edges. Then she looked at the young man before her — tall and well-built, with thighs practically the width of her waist.
She felt her intelligence had been insulted in a way she'd never experienced before.
"Stranger. You have one minute to explain where you came from. Otherwise I will teleport you to the middle of the ocean and let you drink seawater."
Snow smiled, just slightly, and raised one hand. With that single gesture, Shin felt an invisible force pluck him off the bed and leave him dangling, weightless.
In truth — Shin had lived on Witch Island for over a decade and had never properly understood the underlying logic of the Great Witch's magic. It wasn't for lack of trying. He had attempted to learn magic. He'd discovered he could manage a [Float] that barely lifted him a few centimetres and only worked on himself, and a [Preserve Youth] that was equally useless.
Other spells? Not that he couldn't learn them — he could. He simply couldn't activate them after learning. His body just refused.
Of those two, neither one could be called useful in any real sense.
But in the Great Witch's hands — instant weightlessness, instant control, and there was nothing more insidious than this.
"I'm in a fairly good mood today, which doesn't mean I'll tolerate a total stranger appearing in my bedroom and addressing me with that kind of presumptuous familiarity."
Snow made it very clear she was well aware of her status as the Witch Clan's cherished prodigy, and she carried herself with all the hauteur of a princess who had earned the right:
"You don't look like a human. So what are you? Some other kind of humanoid creature I've never encountered?"
She drifted forward, curious, and reached up to touch the bony ridge on his forehead.
Shin: "…"
So the Great Witch had been like this in the past. He hadn't imagined it, apparently.
And she seemed different from him in another key way — he could open the group chat and read everything, retaining his memories from before entering the dream. She couldn't.
He supposed this was the difference in depth of immersion between direct and indirect exposure to St. Trina's nectar — but something still felt faintly off.
"The situation is a little complicated."
Shin thought for a moment, then said:
"Great Witch — you should currently have a magic called [Mimicry] (Mind-Reading), shouldn't you? Why not look at my thoughts yourself and see whether what I'm about to tell you is true?"
"?"
"You're a strange one — most people don't invite others to read their minds. Interesting. Well, if you're insisting on being lazy about explaining yourself—"
Snow raised an eyebrow, somewhat amused by Shin's reaction.
But since the boy had offered, she saw no reason to refuse — and she could sense, without needing magic, that the stranger meant her no harm.
"Then let me see what's actually rattling around in that head of yours… hm?"
But the instant she read Shin's thoughts, the perfectly unbothered expression she'd been wearing flickered.
"What do you mean the Witch Clan was wiped out by humans??"
To be continued…