The air was always freezing to the bone; but today was colder than usual. Although the people of Kutsk resisted, this weather was more than they could bear. They had known for a long time that strange things were happening. But in their tents, they could do nothing but wrap themselves in their furs.
After a while, the earth began to shake. A dazzling blue beam of light appeared in the sky. Beams of blue light were seeping through the doors of the Kutsk people's tents and gleaming the speck of ice suspended in the air, as if it had blinded them. How long the light shone no one knew. The whole world seemed frozen as the light descended into the sky. A second, a minute, or a century.
Time passed and the light disappeared in the same way as it suddenly appeared in the sky.
Tonka swirled around her tent, surrounded by the skulls of all kinds of creatures. The detritus walls of the tent were soiled with black spots in places. Limbs of dead bodies hung from the ceiling: a human finger, a deer's leg, or a wolf's head. This tent looked small from the outside. In fact, it was so small that the people of Kutsk were amazed how a person could fit inside this tent.
The surrounding of the tent was covered with a white sheet in the shape of a one meter circle. The snow melted and a mud puddle was formed at the place where the whiteness ended. This muddy area was a border. The whiteness on the other side of the border was salt, not the snow cover that dominated the area. This salt prevented someone from going outside rather than someone from outside. Unlike other witches, Tonka used to cast salt magic very well. The spells she could cast were of course not limited to salt magic. Around here, a mage's skill was determined by whether or not she did the salt magic well.
Tonka was gifted with being talented, but still she was not respected by the local people, let alone respecting her, the people despised her. Only very desperate people would go to Tonka for magic. her descendants would not smile, and bad luck and misfortune would never let her go. Local people have been encountering strange events in the surrounding area in recent months. The surrounding game animals had decreased. A few months ago, an epidemic had ravaged the tribe. One day, one of the hunters even said that she saw a skull tower in front of Tonka's tent at dusk. The front of her tent was covered with red blood. The people had to get rid of Tonka now. So they prayed to the sky to come and get Tonka.
According to the belief of the Kutsk people, witches were born just like humans and grew up in them. Every witch was sent to those tribes by the god in the sky. As witchcraft is inherited from the family, the child of an ordinary family could also be a witch. The ancient witch of the tribe is told in her/him dreams when she/He will die. Before that day came, it would be clear who the new witch of the tribe would be. If a child was a witch, he/she would have a dream when the time came. A few days after this dream, a mark would appear on his thumb. The appearance of this sign was announced by the spirits to the old witch of the tribe, who would lower her/him drum and light a fire around her tent. She/he would walk around the fire playing her drum and mutter something in an unknown language. The child, who is determined to be a witch, is handed over to this old witch. After the old witch taught the new witch, she/he would leave her place and suddenly disappear by hanging her drum on the tree considered sacred by the local people. A witch could be a woman or a man. Although witches were given some innate powers, their magical powers were different, just as people's temperaments were different. Very powerful witches managed to integrate with nature over time and resorted to strictly prohibited spells. If it is learned that these witches cast such spells and harm the people they were sent to, they will be severely punished.
Of course, all these were nothing but legends. Only the beliefs of the people living in that region were in this direction. Witches also believed in these legends and used their powers for the good of their people. But Tonka was different from her birth. Since she became the new witch, calamities have haunted the people of Kutsk. They even knocked on the door of the neighboring tribe's witch to get rid of Tonka. No one knew how long a witch lived. The time of the witches and the time of the humans were not the same. A second for humans could be a day for them. Tonka was still a young witch, about twenty-eight or twenty-nine at the most. There were elders who remembered her birth. However, no one knew the age of the witch before Tonka.
A beam of blue light descended from the sky that night. The people of Kutsk and other neighboring peoples froze. Only witches could see this beam of light. They all knew that they, the punishers, had descended to earth. Most witches saw this for the first time. The older ones had seen it before. A witch among them must have committed a great sin. Her soul would be imprisoned forever. They all thought of the same name.
They had come for Tonka.