The Silver-Haired Witch Exiled to the West

The charge: sexual misconduct. The victim: a boy. The plaintiff: the Holy Light Church.

And seated in the dock was a silver-haired witch, so beautiful she hardly seemed real.

Gowen Kexesi: the Winter Witch, heir to a four-hundred-year blood feud, and a blood descendant personally acknowledged by Dracula. She had been quietly working at a tavern until a single denunciation dragged her into the maelstrom of a trial. She couldn’t even be bothered to defend herself. She admitted it without a care, as if “molesting a minor” were no different from “a fan meet-and-greet.” After all, the line of people waiting for her autograph stretched from the interrogation room all the way to the end of the corridor.

Exile to the West. Compared with the stake, it was the best outcome her “friends” could secure.

On the eve of her exile, the accuser herself came to see her.

Saint Stephen Airel VI, a sixteen-year-old noble girl, was every inch the picture of poise and elegance. She had reported the witch because of her childhood friend, the young hero Eric. Ever since meeting Gowen Kexesi, he had been distracted and dazed every day, as if she had stolen his soul.

“You have to cure him.”

Gowen Kexesi almost laughed in disbelief. You framed me, got me exiled, and now you want me to fix your precious first love?

But in the end, the witch nodded. Perhaps she was bored, perhaps she simply couldn’t resist getting involved, or perhaps there was more than concern for Eric hidden in the girl’s brown eyes.

And so began a journey into exile: a silver-haired witch, a noble young lady, a contract that might be either a constraint or a bond, and a road leading west into a world of gunfire and sand.