17 parts Complete The wind knew her name.
It whistles it through the cedar groves and croons it against broken barn slats, a sweet, uncatchable sigh: Aradia. Born to the soft hush of loam and lavender, a daughter of moss and moonlight, she walked barefoot before she ever learned to crawl. Her soul, stitched from willow bark and stardust, beat not to clocks or schedules but to the unseen rhythm of roots burrowing deep and rivers carving stone.
She never meant to be a heretic.
Aradia danced. She spoke to trees and kissed frogs on their slick little crowns and left herbs and poems beneath forgotten altars like offerings to a world grown too quiet to believe in magic anymore. A witch. A rebel. A weed in their pristine garden.
But she only ever wanted to bloom.
And bloom she did-wildly, recklessly-until the very soil beneath her feet seemed to rebel with her. Townsfolk with pitchforks and phones in trembling hands began to murmur that her sweetness masked something ancient and dangerous. Rewrite a wrong, the world's gone mad. Make an example. They wanted fire, purification, absolution.
They wanted her bones.