The Storm

History is littered with shadows—Moments of collective fear that birthed injustice, only to vanish and reemerge in new forms. The witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries, in which thousands of women were accused of consorting with the devil and executed, are not just relics of the past. They are mirrors reflecting humanity’s recurring tendency to scapegoat the vulnerable in times of crisis. In Labyrinth of Shadows: The Witch’s Rebirth Part I, author Anna Kolding’s executio

The trees bow. Not in reverence, not in surrender—but under a burden too crystalline, too cruel to bear. Their boughs, once proud and reaching, now arch like the backs of elders worn thin by winters too long. Ice creeps along their limbs like a thief in the night—silent, insidious, claiming what was never offered. It wraps each branch in glass, turning wood to wire, strength to brittleness. The storm moved west to east, a creeping invasion, and left behind not snow, but a kin