I pulled a Molotov cocktail from my belt.

  Sorry about your spooky, magic tree house, I thought, striking a flint to ignite the cloth wick. But better it than me.

  I held in my breath and slowly approached the tree, the Molotov's flame dancing in the cold air. My snowshoes crunched softly on the snow, yet the Sirin continued her eerie lament undisturbed. Despite the noise I was making, she seemed entirely oblivious to my presence—almost as if I were invisible to her senses. It was exactly the same as the night during which Sirin could not spot me while I was lying down in the snow inside my glade.

  Was this some effect of my domain? Perhaps my connection to the witch-blessed-earth was somehow cloaking me from detection, shielding me from her awareness.

  Domain Perception Dampening, I mentally named the phenomenon as I came within the bottle-throwing range of the cursed tree. The effect warranted serious investigation later. It seemed that choosing the path of the witch was finally paying off if it allowed me to hunt down monsters without being spotted by them.

  The Sirin's creepy melody continued above me, unaware of the fiery retribution about to come her way.

  I took careful aim at the twisted nest overhead and chucked my incendiary with all of my strength. The bottle sailed through the air in a perfect arc, crashing against the woven branches with a satisfying shatter. Alcohol splashed across the structure, instantly catching fire. The flames spread rapidly, engulfing the nest in a roaring inferno.

  The Sirin's hum transformed into a shriek of terror. Through the growing flames, I could see her thrashing within the burning nest, her partially healed wings batting uselessly against the fire.

  I ignited and threw the second molotov directly into one of the crevices of the hollow tree. It too ignited from within, casting freakish flashes from its innards.

  The magical tree groaned and shuddered with an alien moan as it burned, the fire spreading quickly thanks to the Sirin’s extra-flammable blood.

  I retreated as all of the wooden spheres caught fire one by one.

  Then, like cracking walnuts, the root and branch spheres exploded, spilling out all of their contents down below in a shower of… blood and bodies.

  I gasped involuntarily, taking another step back. Men and beasts of all varieties tumbled out of the branches—bodies mangled, throats sliced open, yet strangely preserved, none showing any signs of decay or bloating.

  I guessed that either the Sirin hunted them all recently… or that the magical tree had somehow kept them in this suspended state, like macabre trophies.

  One sphere cracked and released something unexpected—living creatures. They scattered in panicked confusion: wild boars with singed hair tumbling and squealing as they fled into the underbrush, disoriented birds taking flight with frantic wing beats, and to my surprise, a small black kitten that tumbled into the snow, shook itself, and darted away between the trees.

  The Sirin's burning body came last, plummeting from her burning nest like a fiery comet of flesh and feathers. She crashed into the snow with a wet thud, sending up a cloud of white snow and gray ash. Even now, she struggled to rise, her charred wings dragging uselessly at her sides.

  "Youuuu..." Emerald fluid bubbled from her throat as she attempted to form words, her golden eyes finding mine through the curtain of flame and smoke. I raised the arbalest, aiming carefully at her head, willing my body to still.

  No more songs, I thought coldly, and squeezed the trigger.

  The bolt flew true, striking with a dull thunk. Her body jerked once, then went still, the flames continuing their grim work.

  I reloaded the arbalest and shot her again for good measure. Then another. Then another.

  Then, I simply stood there for a long moment, staring at the burning oak and its gruesome revelations. The predator had become prey, but the victory felt hollow against the backdrop of such carnage. This wasn't just a nest—it was a magical larder, a slaughterhouse where the Sirin had stored her victims for future consumption.

  As the fire on the massive oak began to die down, I waited at a safe distance, watching intently for any sign of movement from the Sirin's charred remains. The flames had consumed much of her feathered body, leaving behind a blackened husk that barely resembled the elegant, predatory creature that had hunted me for two nights.

  "You better be dead this time," I murmured holding the arbalest at the ready.

  Time crawled by, measured in the soft crackle of burning wood and the occasional pop of sap within the dying tree. Snow began to fall heavily, thick flakes hissing as they touched the hot embers. The Sirin remained motionless, the bolts from my arbalest still protruding from her skull and chest.

  Cautiously, I approached, my boots crunching through ash-stained snow. I kept my weapon trained on her form, half-expecting her to spring to life in one final, desperate attack. When I got close enough, I pulled a sword from the sled that I had acquired from the blacksmith’s shop.

  I prodded her charred body with the sword's tip. No response. The once-golden eyes were dull and lifeless, fixed in a final stare of hatred and pain, emerald feathers scorched by the flames.

  Still, I'd already witnessed her impossible survival once before—I wouldn't make the same mistake twice.

  "Better safe than sorry," I muttered, positioning the sword at her slender neck.

  With a grimace, I brought the blade down hard. The metal bit through charred flesh and sinew. After a few determined strokes, her head separated from her body with a sickening crack.

  I stepped back, breathing heavily, my hands shaking and covered in sweat. The severed head rolled slightly in the snow, those once-hypnotic eyes now vacant and glassy.

  "There," I said, relief flooding through me. “No more magic curses."

  I wiped the sword clean on a patch of unmarred snow, watching as the green fluid sizzled and crystallized upon contact with the cold. Her blood had begun to congeal around her wounds, forming into a substance that resembled jade more than any biological material I recognized.

  Her feathers, those that hadn't been consumed by the flames, retained that strange oily iridescence even in death.

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  Even in death, the Sirin might reveal secrets about this world's magical ecosystem that could prove crucial to my survival. With a grunt of effort, I pulled a large cloth from my pack and spread it on the ground beside her.

  Working quickly, I wrapped the body and the head, binding the package with rope to create a manageable bundle. The weight wasn’t too bad—her hollow avian bones made her lighter than her size would suggest.

  As I hauled my grim prize back to the sled, a soft sound caught my attention—a plaintive mewl coming from the direction of my makeshift domain. I tensed, dropping the Sirin's bundled body and raising my arbalest in one fluid motion.

  There, perched atop my mound of enchanted soil, sat the small black kitten I'd seen tumble from one of the tree's spheres. It was tiny, barely more than a ball of fluff with legs, its coal-black coat contrasting starkly against the violet-tinged earth.

  "Hey there kitten," I said, lowering my weapon slightly. "You're either very brave or very foolish to approach a man who just killed your captor."

  The kitten mewled again, turning its face toward the sound of my voice. I froze as I saw its eyes—not the yellow or green I might have expected, but a milky, pure white. It was blind, yet somehow it had found its way directly to my sled, to the heart of my portable domain.

  Perhaps, it got there because it did not wish me harm like the Sirin.

  The kitten stood, stretching its small body before padding in a wobbly circle atop the soil. It seemed comfortable there, as if the magic-infused earth called to it in some way I couldn't perceive.

  I approached slowly, not wanting to startle the creature. It turned toward me again, those sightless eyes somehow finding me unerringly. Another soft mewl escaped its tiny mouth, this one almost... questioning.

  "I suppose you need somewhere to go," I said, carefully strapping the Sirin's bundled corpse onto the sled with a bundle of rope. "Though I'm not sure taking in potentially magical strays is the wisest course of action."

  The kitten merely blinked its milky eyes and settled more comfortably into the soil, kneading its tiny paws into the earth as if claiming it.

  I sighed, recognizing defeat when I saw it. "Right. Guess… I have a cat now. This is fine. Better than talking to myself, right? Heh. Cats are a witch thing, aren’t they?”

  The kitten purred, a sound that seemed far too large for its tiny body.

  “Wait,” I said suddenly. “You can hear me, right?”

  The kitten let out a "Mrwwwll."

  I reached out and gave the kitten a pet. The kitten melted into my hand, nudging my fingers with its little pink button nose.

  For a moment I contemplated how a kitten could hear me while the monstrous Sirin could not. Perhaps mundane animals could see me just fine while magical beasts were somehow blinded by my domain. Not entirely blinded though, because the Sirin did see something abominable.

  ‘Something wrong’ she called me. Perhaps from her point of view, I was the monster.

  Well, it was too late to interrogate the evil song-bird to ask her as to what she saw when I spoke to her from the doorway. I glanced at the bundled up corpse.

  Maybe I could find another Sirin, one who would be more amenable to working with a witch?

  I turned my attention to the victims that had spilled from the tree. Their bodies lay scattered across the clearing. Men dressed in furs similar to those I wore—likely travelers or villagers who had wandered too close to her hunting grounds. Animals of various sizes, from wolves to what appeared to be a small bear, all preserved in the same bloodless state.

  I approached the nearest body and inhaled through my nose. It smelled slightly sweet. I wondered if the Sirin or her domain tree produced something like glycerin.

  An unsettling hypothesis formed in my mind: what if the Sirin wasn't just storing food, but harvesting something from these bodies? The peculiar state of preservation, the systematic wounds, the way they'd been arranged within the tree's growths—all suggested a purpose beyond mere sustenance.

  I returned to examining the bodies, checking the cuts left by the Sirin’s talons.

  While some of them seemed simply preserved, others only had the appearance of preservation, and were instead filled with root-like green crystalline yet wet webs. Curious, I knelt beside one of the bodies—a man dressed in hunting leathers—and carefully examined the wound at his throat. The edges were clean, surgical almost, but what caught my attention was the interior of the wound itself.

  Instead of the expected dried tissue and congealed blood, delicate filaments of emerald crystal webbed throughout the cavity.

  I used the tip of my sword to gently probe the structure, finding it yielding yet resilient, like a gelatinous matrix infused with crystalline nodes.

  “Huh,” I said and then I recalled Yaga’s words—"All things that decay and bloom in your domain's soil will gradually empower you."

  “Did she… cultivate something inside these poor bastards?” I wondered.

  I moved from body to body, finding similar patterns. Some were in early stages, with just traces of the green webwork near their fatal wounds. Others, likely older victims, were nearly hollowed out, their internal cavities filled with complex lattices of the crystal-like substance.

  One particular body—a female warrior judging by her weathered face and the broken sword still clutched in her rigid hand via rigor mortis—had been altered more extensively than the others. When I turned her over, I discovered that her back had split open along the spine, revealing what appeared to be much thicker crystalline webbing forming... something akin to a crystalline, hollow sphere.

  Damn, I thought. She wasn't just feeding on them—she was transforming them somehow. But into what and why?

  I turned my attention to the burned tree itself. Approaching cautiously, I examined the blackened trunk where the flames had revealed what lay beneath the bark. The oak's interior wasn't wood at all, but a complex network of the same emerald crystalline webs I'd found in the bodies. It permeated every inch of the tree's structure, turning what had once been a normal centuries-old oak into something entirely alien.

  The tree hadn't merely housed the Sirin—it had become an extension of her. Or perhaps she was an extension of it. The distinction seemed increasingly meaningless the more I observed.

  Near the base of the trunk, where the fire had burned hottest, the crystalline structure had partially melted and reformed into glass-like puddles. I collected a sample of this as well.

  "The Sirin and the tree—a symbiotic relationship," I theorized aloud. "She brings the bodies, it provides the environment for... whatever this process is."

  I continued my investigation, circling the massive oak. On the far side, partially hidden by what remained of the lower branches, I discovered something that made my blood run cold—a second nest, smaller than the Sirin's but constructed with the same technique. Within it, curled in a fetal position, lay a half-formed lanky creature, neither fully human nor fully bird.

  Its body was that of a female child, perhaps eleven years old, but emerald feathers had begun to sprout from its arms, and its feet had elongated, the toes stretching into talons. The face remained human, though the eyes, open and vacant, had the same golden hue as the Sirin's. The transformation had been interrupted by death by fire.

  The hair on the back of my head stood up. Was this a human girl, stolen away and being transformed into a Sirin? Was this supposed to be my fate had I given in to her music? Was this the 'freedom' and 'the sky throne' that the Sirin's first song promised to me, a transformation from an Earth-bound Yaga to a sky-bound Sirin?

  I wondered if all Sirins began this way—as witches, transformed through this gruesome process into the predatory beings that haunted the forest. Had the Sirin herself once been human? Had she been blessed with magic power and taken from her ruined village as a child, subjected to the same metamorphosis she now inflicted on others?

  Was this a Sirin-producing tree?

  The questions multiplied, but answers remained elusive. For now, I had gathered enough samples and observations to begin a more thorough analysis back in the pub.

  I got more rope out of the sleigh and attached as many Sirin-tree-preserved specimens as I could move about, trying them together into a train of bundles.

  "No freaky supernatural murdery powers," I warned the curled-up kitten as we began our journey back through the dying forest. "I mean it. You better not be a xenokitten in disguise or something.”

  The kitten merely yawned in response, curling into a tighter ball atop my domain, apparently content to let me transport it to its new home.