THE WARLOCK AND THE HEALER

Come gather close, you wanderers, and let the torches burn,

I’ll sing you of a binding that made saints and demons turn.

Not crown, nor oath, nor kingdom’s law could cut this story through—

The warlock bound in midnight’s ink,

The healer robed in dew.

He was born beneath an omen, with a comets’ broken trail,

In a house of empty cupboards, under frost and hunger’s veil.

When the fever took his sister and the priests refused their care,

He walked out into moonlight with a curse upon the air.

By an old and crooked willow, where the river bent like glass,

He whispered names best left unsaid and felt the darkness pass.

A hand of living shadow reached and took his trembling palm,

And etched a pact along his veins in sigils, cold and calm.

She was raised in marble corridors where incense kissed the stone,

Taught to keep her gaze uplifted and her heart a borrowed throne.

They draped her in the colors of a quiet, patient dawn,

And told her, “Child, your hands belong to gods, not flesh and bone.”

She learned the hymns and blessings, how to mend and how to mend,

How to smile like distant starlight that the poor could not offend.

But somewhere in her ribcage there was thunder held too tight,

A question that the scriptures never answered quite right.

He walked with whispers on his skin,

She walked with prayer in every breath.

He held the power of the dusk,

She held the mercy of what’s left.

And every fate that feared their names

Would tremble, sharp as broken glass—

The warlock and the healer,

Two hearts the world would never let pass.

They met beside a gallows tree where bodies used to swing,

Now just a lonely scaffold where the crows refused to sing.

He’d been dragged there in the morning, chains around his spell-marked wrists,

Accused of bringing drought and plague with every charm and twist.

She was sent to read the rites, to bless a soul condemned,

To stand as holy witness when the rope would finally bend.

But when she saw the sigils burned like ink along his hands,

Something deep inside her whispered, “I know what it is to be damned.”

He laughed, a rough and broken sound, and said, “You should not stare.

Your gods won’t like you looking long at something their wrath wears.”

She answered, voice as steady as a chalice full of wine,

“If silence is what pleases them, then they are no friends of mine.”

That night the town took shelter when the storm began to rise,

But out beyond the chapel walls, a different storm took size.

She cut the rope with shaking hands and broke his iron ring,

And thunder rolled approvingly, a low and distant sing.

She touched the darkness in his veins,

He touched the doubt inside her prayers.

She said, “You are not only curse,”

He said, “You are not only theirs.”

And every law and holy book

Would crack beneath that simple truth—

The warlock and the healer,

Two hearts that chose a different proof.

At dawn the bells were screaming like a sky about to break,

The abbots shouted blasphemy, the guards began to wake.

They found the gallows empty, found the footprints in the mud,

Found a single scrap of cassock stamped in candlewax and blood.

“Anathema!” the bishop roared. “She walks with hell’s own son!

A vessel of corruption, let her exile be begun.”

They painted her a traitor in the stories told that day,

But no one saw the tremor when the altar lights went grey.

Out past the fields and hedgerows, where the world grows thin and strange,

They ran with lungs of burning cloth and hearts that tried to change.

He said, “They’ll send their hunters, they will brand your name with hate.”

She said, “They never knew my name. You did. That seals my fate.”

They slept beneath a leaning oak, his cloak around them both,

Her fingers tracing runes along the pact-mark, slow and loath.

“Does it hurt?” she asked in whispers. “Does it own you, this dark brand?”

He replied, “Not half as much as when you let go of my hand.”

No chapel heard their promises,

No choir recorded what they swore;

Just wind and leaves and two frayed souls

Who would not be alone no more.

“I will walk your shadowed road,” she said.

“I will stand between your fear,” he swore.

“And if the heavens call it sin—

We’ll be the sin worth dying for.”

They came upon a border town with sickness in the rain,

With children pale as winter ghosts and elders wracked with pain.

The priests had packed their reliquaries and gone to safer ground,

Leaving candles on the doorstep as the plague crept all around.

They came upon a border town with sickness in the rain,

With children pale as winter ghosts and elders wracked with pain.

The priests had packed their reliquaries and gone to safer ground,

Leaving candles on the doorstep as the plague crept all around.

She knelt in muddy doorways, he stood shaking at her back,

Fearful that his cursed touch would make the ailing bodies crack.

But when she laid her glowing hands and asked him for his aid,

He poured his midnight through her light and watched the fever fade.

Her healing flared like summer suns, his power shaped its course,

Together they could weave a spell that felt like gentle force.

Word spread like brushfire through the hills:

“Sick who suffer, come at dusk—

There’s a witch and fallen saint out there

Whose touch outlives your husk.”

The townsfolk lit them lanterns, left them bread and salted meat,

But always in the distance lay the sound of marching feet.

For every soul they brought back whole, a rumor doubled size—

And fear is fast as any horse when robed men organize.

His pact-fed power fed her grace,

Her steady faith refined his flame.

Together they were something new

That neither side knew how to name.

And kings and cardinals learned to flinch

At stories whispered over ale—

The warlock and the healer,

A love no scaffold could impale.

They came with brands and fetters, with decrees signed in gold ink,

With relics meant to break his will and chains to make her sink.

The captain of the hunters raised his sigil to the sky,

And called upon the righteous right of law to make them die.

“Stand down,” the armored voices called. “Lay hands apart, confess.

You, girl, renounce this consort and regain your holiness.

You, sorcerer, release your pact, accept a cleaner death—

We’ll send you to your judgment with a sword instead of breath.”

She stepped before the warlock, not a tremor in her stance,

The setting sun behind her turned her tears to sharpened lance.

“If I must choose between your god and the life that stands behind,

Then let your scriptures burn to ash—I won’t betray what I’ve aligned.”

He placed his palm upon her shoulder, shadow flickering at the seam,

And said, “I never asked you once to share this haunted dream.

Yet here you are, defying heavens that refused to hear your calls—

If hell must be the price of you, then let me tear down all their walls.”

Light met darkness, not as foes,

But as lovers under siege.

Her sigils flared in holy gold,

His burned in ink like ancient griege.

The air grew thick with whispered names

No mortal tongue should speak aloud,

But through it all she held his gaze

Like it was the only vow allowed.

The hunters thrust their banners forth, the earth shook under stride,

But when they crossed the warding line, the sky itself replied.

His pact-lords reached through fractured air, her patron answered, too,

A hail of spectral wings and eyes above the forming view.

On one side stood a temple’s choir with swords of righteous flame,

On th’other, shadowed regents who had signed away his name.

Between them, just the two of them, a circle drawn in dust,

With love as sole defensive spell and stubborn, fragile trust.

“To you who bargained for my soul,” he shouted to the void,

“I’ve paid in scars and sleepless nights for every gift employed.

But I will not be weapon now for those who scorn her breath—

Take back your chains or take my life, but you won’t script her death.”

“To you who sit on distant thrones,” she raised her voice to light,

“You taught me words like ‘mercy’ while you turned away from blight.

If loving him offends your law, then your law is built on sand—

You may remove your blessing, but you’ll never move my hand.”

Two silhouettes against the storm,

Two voices tearing veils apart.

One bound in ink, one crowned in hymn,

One stolen soul, one stubborn heart.

And all who watched from safe remove

Would whisper, shaken, ever after—

“The warlock and the healer—

Even gods fear what they gather.”

The air exploded, not with sound, but with a silence bright and wide,

As if creation held its breath and folded in its pride.

Her lantern cracked and spilled its flame, his markings bled like wine,

Their magic met in one sharp line that cut the world’s design.

When all was done, the hunters fled, their sigils black and dead,

The relics rusted into dust, the banners torn to shred.

The patrons in their distant planes drew back, their contracts burned,

For mortal hearts that choose their own are pacts they’ve never learned.

But power has a price in weight, and both of them sank down,

He cradled her in trembling arms upon the scorched, bare ground.

Her pulse was like a flickering star that struggles not to fade,

His breath came harsh and ragged as he cursed the choice they’d made.

But power has a price in weight, and both of them sank down,

He cradled her in trembling arms upon the scorched, bare ground.

Her pulse was like a flickering star that struggles not to fade,

His breath came harsh and ragged as he cursed the choice they’d made.

“Stay,” he begged the quiet air. “Stay, or let me follow through.

I did not tear away my chains just to live without you.”

She smiled, a line of aching light, and brushed his ashen cheek,

“You’ve always feared that you were curse; let this be proof you’re more than bleak.”

She took his hand and pressed it flat

Against the hollow of her throat,

Tracing shapes of hidden runes

She’d learned in secret, note by note.

“No pact,” she said, “can own you now,

No altar claim your final breath.

If I must walk beyond this field,

You’ll walk the borderlands of death.”

A kiss, a word, a stolen spark—

Her healing sunk into his core.

The wound she took into herself

Closed on him, and bled no more.

He felt her spirit slipping like a tide that’s going home,

He tried to drag it back to shore through sheer and stubborn bone.

“Don’t you dare,” he growled and sobbed. “Don’t you leave me with their lies.

We broke their chains together; they don’t get your sacrifice.”

She whispered, “Listen, foolish heart, can’t you feel what we became?

We cut a hole in everything that tried to keep us tamed.

If my breath ends, you still remain—a lantern built from all we did.

Be the story they can’t bury. Be the truth they never hid.”

Her fingers slackened slowly, but her mark stayed on his palm,

A trace of warmth that lingered like a never-ending psalm.

The earth around them exhaled dew, the burned field sprouted green,

As if the world itself agreed to hold what they had been.

He held her there till dawnlight turned the ashes into mist,

Then drew a circle ‘round her form and sealed it with a kiss.

A grave of seeds instead of stones, of herbs instead of flags,

So every spring her power would rise from out the mountain crags.

Now taverns hum a different tune

When whispers touch her name.

No martyr bound to temple walls,

No pawn of distant flame.

They sing of how her gentle hands

Could turn to iron for one soul—

The healer who chose outlawed love

Above a sanctified control.

And of the man who bore the marks

Of every demon’s hungry claim,

But broke his chains for one small light

And set the sky in flame.

He wanders now in borderlands where shrines lie overgrown,

A wanderer with quiet eyes and magic all his own.

The pact-smoke does not rise from him, the sigils have gone dim,

But when the hopeless call for help, a shadow answers them.

He never builds a temple and he never takes a throne,

He mends the broken fences and he stands where storms have blown.

Some swear they see a second shape that follows at his side,

A ghost of light with braided hair and wounds that never bide.

The churches changed their scriptures, though they’d never dare confess,

They softened words on “heresy” and “unpermitted bless.”

The lords who once sent hunters out now bar their keep at night,

For rumor says the pair return when injustice takes to flight.

Parents tell their children, “Love is safe inside the lines,”

But children grow, and some will choose to cross the old designs.

And when they do, in dreams they see a woman veiled in flame,

A man with night along his veins who softly speaks their name.

You can lock your holy doors,

You can ink your laws in stone,

But hearts will always seek the ones

Who feel like coming home.

And if that home is cloaked in dark

And if that door is wrapped in light,

Then blessed be the hands that choose

To hold both shadow and the bright.

He walked out of the gallows’ noose,

She walked away from sanctified.

Together they rewrote a world

That thought their love a crime to hide.

The warlock with his haunted past,

The healer with her burning will—

Their names are carved in deeper runes

Than any temple on a hill.

So when you hear the old bells ring

Or see strange lanterns through the dim,

Remember: fate once feared the pair—

The warlock bound to darkness,

And the healer bound to him.