Chapter Text
For cosmic beings, there is no such thing as right or wrong, no morality- there is only the sacred balance.
By all accounts, Death should not bring life into the world. It is unnatural, a fracture in the order of things, something close to sacrilege.
Life is not hers to give. She knows this well.
And yet, there came a moment when the boundary yielded.
And she allowed it.
1751
There was blood. So much blood she could no longer tell where it began or ended.
It had been hours, or perhaps days, she could not tell anymore.
Rio had never felt real pain before, not like this. She used to be above it- mere tickles, she would say. Physical suffering was something lesser beings were burdened with. She was certain it could not touch her.
But pain does not respect certainty. It answered her anyway.
It came in sharp, burning waves, too real to dismiss, too immediate to escape. Making the powerful Lady Death lose her footing. And within it was the truth that something was being brought into existence through her breaking apart.
In that moment, she was no longer only Death. She was a woman, a threshold through which life was forced to pass.
Even as the labour pains broke through Rio, beneath it all, there was her voice. More than half a year later, those desperate cries of her wife surfaced without any warning, haunting her mercilessly:
“You do this, and I will hate you forever.”
The words found her at the worst possible moment- when she could not turn from their sting, could not silence them, could not be anything but open.
For the first time in millennia, she was doubting her strength.
Desperately holding onto the foot of the bed she once shared with her wife, Death let out a guttural scream that felt powerful enough to rip the house to pieces.
The pain crested again, sharper this time, stealing the air from her lungs and turning her thoughts into fragments.
Rio’s grip weakened- fingers slipped against the worn wood.
She slumped backwards, breath shuddering and felt the tiny body slipping out of her own.
For a moment, the room stood still. Almost aware.
Then, a weak wail filled the silence. Quiet but definitely alive. Beautiful.
Trembling, Rio reached down. Not hesitating. Not uncertain. She gathered the child into her arms and brought it close, as though instinct had existed in her long before she ever had reason to use it.
She placed the newborn gently against her chest.
“My sweet girl,” she half-whispered, half-sobbed, as though speaking too loudly might break the baby.
Her fingers curled carefully around the small shape against her chest- to confirm it was real.
“I wondered if you would feel like anything at all,” The Green Witch placed the softest kiss on top of her head. “You feel like mine. And I will not lose you.”
She let her head fall back, heavy with exhaustion.
But right then, the little thing began to stir against her chest.
Not with intention at first- just movement, searching, as though stillness had become intolerable. Then more certain. A soft, insistent nuzzle, turning blindly into her warmth, mouth parting slightly, quietly demanding something.
The child’s eyes remained shut tight, her small face twisted faintly, as if she were trying to complain, displeased with just how long and tiring her birth was.
Then it dawned on her. Her little girl was looking for sustenance. She simply was hungry.
It was something Rio only understood in theory- but not in practice.
The child turned its head again, rooting without understanding, failing to latch.
Rio tried to adjust.
Once. Then again.
Nothing aligned.
Not yet.
Death huffed out.
“…Stay still,” she murmured. A habit of control slipping into the wrong kind of moment.
The child did not listen.
She could not.
She simply persisted, and for the first time, Death felt something akin to disorientation.
And then, a shift. The girl stilled for a fraction of a second longer than before. The searching became less frantic, less lost.
Rio froze. Held steady and did not dare to move.
After what felt like an eternity, she latched and settled.
A relieved breath escaped the new mother. Long and quiet.
“…There,” she said softly, tracing protection runes on the baby’s back.
The feeling of her daughter feeding was nothing short of foreign.
It wasn’t pain nor comfort.
Death felt it clearly then- the flowing energy. Leaving her body and being steadily transferred to her baby.
For the first time, she was not guiding the flow.
She was part of it.
The child settled as she fed, the earlier unrest dissolving into a fragile but steady rhythm.
Now calmer, the girl began to move in smaller, curious ways- testing the world she had arrived in. Her tiny fingers curled, then uncurled, brushing clumsily against Rio’s skin before catching in her damp, sweat-soaked hair.
The grip was weak. But it was there.
Rio stilled completely. Watched her daughter’s fingers curling around the strand.
Then, with visible effort, her eyes began to open.
They did not focus at once. They drifted, unfixed- until, without quite knowing how, they settled on Rio.
And remained.
The girl earned a little gasp from her mother’s lips.
Rio was met with the most beautiful set of eyes. She knew them. Better than anyone.
Not from repetition. Not from passing. From something far more meaningful.
She had only seen eyes like those once before.
Mesmerising piercing blues- just like hers.
2026
Right before Agatha lost The Darkhold, it had whispered something that never left her mind.
A sentence that clung like a curse.
“Follow Death to where she lives.”
As long as they had known each other, Rio had always been the one to follow. To linger. To watch from just out of reach.
Death had learned Agatha’s patterns patiently, obsessively. And Agatha, the Witch Killer had rarely followed anyone. She did not need to, nor did she want to.
Following Death’s trail should have been harder.
But it was not- not for her, at least.
Death’s magic did not conceal itself, it simply existed. The natural order of all things, subtle, ancient, woven into the world in incomprehensible ways. And Agatha was skilled enough to notice those threads when she chose to.
Her wife would never expect to be followed, not by any sane person, and especially not by her. Not like this.
Not given what they had been through.
So Agatha followed the magic trail until it led her somewhere still.
A house- radiating with magic as ancient as the Earth itself.
Everything around it was wrong in a quiet way. Almost frozen in time. The buildings appeared old, but not in the way things become old over time. The houses looked as if they had been built recently, and then asked to pretend they had always been there.
Everything felt slightly unanchored.
It was way too calm.
She could feel it immediately- witches nearby, scattered through the surrounding homes, their presences subtle but deliberate.
Back in the day, Agatha would try to annihilate the whole neighbourhood, given the chance, sucking every last bit of magic from these clueless witches. It was very tempting.
But at this moment, none of it mattered as much as what stood directly ahead.
The house.
And inside it- Rio.
She could not see her, not yet.
But oh, she felt her.
At first, what reached her felt familiar. That signature pressure of Death’s presence- vast, controlled, heavy.
But the more she “looked", the more she felt it. Her energy felt disturbed. And Rio was far from calm.
She was distraught, worried. The feelings were sharp and contained, pressed down so deeply they almost disguised themselves as steadiness—but not quite enough for Agatha to miss it.
And then- there was something else. She paused, her attention shifting without effort. Another presence. Smaller.
A little witchling.
It didn’t feel like the others. Not like the witches nearby, steady and contained in their own space. This one was… harder to place. Alive, clearly. But not fully.
Agatha frowned slightly, her focus narrowing.
This is odd, she mused.
That faint energy she managed to sense changed everything. Got her curious. Made her pause at the very edge of the property. She observed, nestled between the trees.
And she realised, with a slow, unwelcome clarity, that their familiar roles shifted.
For once, she was not the one being followed.
She was the one lurking.