The cave became more than a shelter—it became a world unto itself. At first, Ahayue had thought of it as a place to hide from the cold, from the avalanche, from the beasts that still prowled in his memory. But under Andalusia's watchful eyes, the stone chambers transformed into a school, a hearth, a prison, and a sanctuary all at once.
She let him sleep the first few days. His body was battered, his spirit thin as paper. He remembered little of those early hours, only her cool hands pressing herbs into his wounds, the flicker of firelight, and her voice—sometimes high and soft like a young woman, sometimes hoarse and cracked like brittle bark. He would awaken and see her as a maiden, hair black as a raven's wing, skin smooth and pale. Then he would blink and she was ancient, bent, her hands veined and trembling as if time had punished her for centuries.
"You will learn not to stare," she said once, catching his gaze as he flinched at the change. Her eyes glinted, gold in the firelight. "The curse shifts me. Age means nothing to me anymore. Only the hunger of the shadow."
And yet, in those changes, he saw not horror but pity. She was broken by years, but also tempered by them. A woman who had carried fire in her chest for two hundred winters and had not yet let it die.
The First Lessons
When Ahayue could stand without trembling, Andalusia set him to work.
"You must understand the world before you wield its secrets," she told him. "The jungle, the mountains, the river—they all carry memory. Learn to listen, and you will never starve."
She led him outside, where snow still clung to the stone ridges. She bent and brushed her fingers over a patch of moss. Her form then was youthful, her voice sharp.
"Feel it," she instructed.
He crouched, hesitant. The moss was cool beneath his fingertips.
"Do not just touch. Breathe with it. Let your curse bleed a little."
At her urging, he let the familiar ache stir in his veins—the black pressure that had haunted him since the ceremony. The moss seemed to quiver, and for an instant, he felt not its surface but its thirst, its patient clinging to rock, its slow hunger for water and light. He gasped and pulled away.
"Good," Andalusia said, though her face looked weary, almost regretful. "That is the first step. To survive, you must taste what others feel. Even the smallest plant. Even the beasts."
Day by day, she made him do this with herbs, with roots, with the bones of animals she had stored in clay jars. Each left impressions upon him: bitterness, hunger, the faint echo of death. It unsettled him, but it also sharpened something inside him.
The Curse as a Blade
The true lessons began at night. Andalusia would sit across from him by the fire, her face changing as the flames rose and fell.
"Your curse is a beast. Left untamed, it devours. But if you master its teeth, it will guard you. Tonight, we begin."
She drew a circle of ash on the stone floor. Strange symbols bent and curled around it like serpents. She motioned for him to step inside.
As soon as he did, the air thickened. He felt the curse inside him writhe, like worms under his skin. Shadows on the wall thickened into forms, beasts half-formed and whispering.
"Do not fear them," Andalusia said, her voice resonant, not quite human. "Shape them."
He reached out with trembling hands. The shadow-things hissed. One lunged, a wolf-shape of smoke and teeth. Reflexively, he thought of pushing it back—and the curse answered. A black ripple pulsed outward, scattering the beast.
Andalusia smiled, both young and old at once. "You are beginning to bite."
The nights grew harsher. Sometimes he collapsed, sweat pouring, head splitting from the pressure. Sometimes he lashed out too strongly, breaking her jars or cracking the stone with dark force. But each time, she steadied him, sometimes with stern words, sometimes with a hand on his shoulder, maternal and patient.
Weeks in the Witch's Care
Time blurred in the cave. Days became a rhythm of survival and secrets. He would rise to gather water or hunt small game under Andalusia's instructions. She taught him snares, taught him which roots warmed the blood and which would stop the heart. By night, she drilled him in curse-magic, weaving survival with sorcery until he no longer knew where one ended and the other began.
The curse left marks on him. His eyes glimmered faintly in the dark now. His dreams were sharper, filled with visions of places he had never seen—temples, graves, rivers of fire. Once, he awoke screaming, and Andalusia was beside him, cradling his head like a mother.
"Do not fear the dreams," she whispered, her voice cracking like an old woman's. "They are the curse's way of speaking. I know them well. Too well."
It was then she admitted her truth.
"I was once like you. Young. Proud. I thought I could master it. But years turned into decades, and I learned the curse never loosens. It takes, it erodes. Some nights I remember who I was. Other nights, I am a stranger even to myself."
Her hands trembled as she stroked his hair. "That is why I teach you. So you may be stronger than I was. Or die trying."
Bonding and Loneliness
Despite the heaviness of her words, Ahayue began to love the days. There was something comforting in her presence, even when she changed. She laughed sometimes—awkwardly, as if she had forgotten the sound. He told her stories of his tribe, of the river hunts, of the ceremony that had broken him. She listened, eyes glistening with something like envy.
"I had a tribe once," she confessed one evening, her face the face of a weary crone. "Long gone. Their bones dust by now. I outlived them all, every friend, every child. Do you know what it is to bury a hundred lifetimes, Ahayue?"
He shook his head, throat tight.
She smiled sadly. "Pray you never do."
In those moments, she was not a witch, not a monster, but a woman who had carried too much sorrow for too long. And he, though still only a boy, felt the weight of her loneliness pressing against his own.
The Lessons Grow Harder
As the weeks stretched, Andalusia grew sterner.
One morning, she led him to a frozen river at the mountain's base. "Control is nothing if you cannot use it while the world tries to kill you," she said. She plunged her hand into the icy water, pulled out a fish writhing in her grip, and snapped its neck with ease.
"Now you."
He hesitated, the cold biting his skin, but she did not allow retreat. Hours later, shivering and numb, he finally managed to channel the curse into a darting pulse that stunned the fish long enough to seize it.
"Good," she said, though her face was pale and old again. "You will need that."
Another time, she sent him into the forest with nothing but a bone knife. "The shadow will hide you. But you must kill with your own hands. Otherwise you are nothing but prey."
When he returned with a hare, blood staining his palms, her eyes softened. "You learn quickly. Quicker than I expected."
Foreshadowing
And yet, no matter how much he learned, there were cracks. Sometimes Andalusia would freeze mid-lesson, her form flickering violently between youth and age, her voice breaking into whispers not meant for him. He would see terror on her face, raw and unguarded.
"The curse…" she murmured once, clutching her chest. "It claws, even now. I hold it back, but one day… one day it will break free."
He wanted to ask more, but she silenced him with a look, a weary command.
Instead, he worked harder. If the curse would one day consume her, then he would be ready—he would find a way to outlast what had broken her.
Andalusia, for her part, never spoke of it again. She only watched him as he trained, her eyes filled with pride and sorrow, as if she already saw the day he would walk away from her into the world beyond the mountains.
By the time the snows began to thin, Ahayue was no longer the frightened boy who had stumbled into her cave. His body was leaner, his eyes darker, his curse sharpened into a blade he could wield without losing himself—most of the time. He owed it to her. To the witch who was his mother and his shadow, his teacher and his warning.
And yet, in the silence between their lessons, he wondered if her teachings were a gift… or the slow carving of his fate into the same lonely path she had walked for two hundred years.