Carving Witches

After Grandpa died, he left me one final instruction: "Don't pay off my debts for me."

I didn't listen. From then on, the character for "pact" was carved into my bones, and black witching marks crept across my wrist.

Grandpa's urn was empty. Inside was only a wooden tablet bearing my name and a single line: "The first debt is due."

Following the clues, I discovered that Grandpa had signed eleven witch pacts on behalf of eleven strangers during his lifetime, pledging their life spans, names, and bloodlines to shield them from the reckoning of the laws of heaven and earth.

He had written the three minor ones on paper, leaving me a way to repay them and live.

He had carved the eight major ones into the bedframe, hiding them for thirty whole years, too afraid to let me see.

It wasn't until I lifted the bamboo mat and saw the eleven knife marks of varying depths on the bedframe that I understood.

Grandpa wasn't the one in debt.

He was the guardian who took on the game for others.

And behind those contracts lay a century-old game devised by someone still alive.