black salt sermons

21, she/her, writer

[witchofhellskitchen]

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[harvestmoss]

🌿 Cleansing (Milo's Ultimate Guide)

Cleansing is the most important spellwork and ritual a witch should know. We may take showers and vacuum our houses, but we’re missing the spiritually cleansing part of ourselves, objects, and spaces. Spiritual cleansing is the practice of removing unwanted energies or spirits from our space, it may also help with “restarting” objects and to remove stale energies. Knowingly or unknowingly, these unwanted energies can obstruct and weaken your physic work, and lessens your chances of success. Typically before doing any spells, one should cleanse using a method they see fit.

If a room doesn’t feel right all of a sudden, an animal refuses to go into a space, the air feels oppressive and off, areas that are frequently the scenes of violence, a cleansing is needed. When receiving new tools for your craft, one should cleanse them from the past. If your body is icky or your charging is not powerful, a cleansing of yourself is needed. Here are some different ways to cleanse. Things I've found in other books, done myself, mixed with other spellworks, and more. Picked straight from my grimoire! Chapters:

Cleansing with Water.

Cleansing with Smoke.

Cleansing with Fire.

Cleansing with Sound.

Cleansing with your Broomstick.

Cleansing with Dirt, Herbs, Spit, and More.

Closing Notes.

Cleansing with Water

Spray the following waters on any objects, yourself, space, etc to cleanse them. Some of these waters can be added to baths, spray bottles, bowls and be used for regular cleaning too, these waters have been "modified" to enhance cleansing. While the most basic cleansing water is Salt Water, in which you mix water and salt together to gain cleansing waters. These waters may have more enhanced effects. For example, Florida Water empowers any formulae to which it is added.

Holy water

Florida water

Indigo water

Marie Laveau water

Notre Dame water

Pollution water

Rose of Jericho water

Tar water

War water

Make an infusion by pouring boiling water over black snakeroot/black cohosh, sprinkle it with rosemary wand to erase evil spirits.

You can throw evil spirits, bad vibrations and used amulets into the water. Go to a stream with running water and throw the object against the current. Then throw water three times after it. Clean your hands and face in water afterwards.

If you want to clean bowls, jars, pots and pans that you may have caught annoying spirits with or they feel stale and negative, then clean the jar by pulling it against the current three times so that it is flooded with water. Clean your hands and face afterwards. Feel free to mumble cleansing spells or prayers in between.

If you want to clean or renew the energy in amulets, jewellery and the like, you can tie the object to a tree and let it float in the running water for a few hours. It is best on a day when the sun's light plays in the spring's abundance. You can also place the object in a glass bowl. Sprinkle marjoram around it. Pour spring water over and let it soak in a beautiful spot in the sun from sunrise to sunset.

Spring water or water from a running stream is filled in clear bowls, pans, or jars and rests in the sun for a few hours. Take them inside and let them trap negative vibrations, spirits and air overnight. The water can be scented with herbs or oils as desired. The next day, the water is poured into running water (depends on how you scented the water). Holy Water can be used if spring water is not available at the time.

Make a strong infusion with angelica, strain out the herbs, and add the infusion together with white vinegar to a bucket of wash water to cleanse the floors and surfaces of a house. Boiling water to burn the evil spirits that’s in your floor boards.

In a big bot or iron cauldron, simmer rue, stinging nettle, and vervain. When the mixture is steaming, plunge or douse your knives, athames, and swords with the water.

Good to note that different types of water exist in nature such as, snow, rain, storm, spring water, water fall, etc. These waters also can have different effects for your cleansing.

Submerge your body in the ocean or a lake, feel how the natural water washes away the unwanted energies out of you, how your body gets recharged from the natural world. Alternatively, taking a bath or a shower to quite literally clean and bath yourself is also a valid spiritual cleansing method.

Cleansing with Smoke

The smell of incense smoke harmonizes soul and mind, the scent is the soul of the flower and brings memories of the sun, the moon, deep nights and forests into the room you’re cleansing. Scents gives birth to imagination and inspiration. The scent fills the room with ethereal beauty. Scents can also calm down anxiety and anxious thoughts. And smelling certain scents can have effects on your body. Mugwort, for example, is often used for sleeping as well as lavender, and smelling these flowers and herbs induces sleep.

Use dry herbs. Herbs and roots with an aromatic scent should be dominant in a scented incense. Green herbs without a strong scent smell like hay when burned. Herbal mixture can be tied up in strings or set on fire, you can hold it in your hand or place it in an ashtray. You can also throw it on a fire or lit charcoal.

Sage*, mugwort, rosemary, juniper, and frankincense are great for purifying. Bundle it together or burn incense sticks separately. Other combinations:

3 parts frankincense, 2 parts benzoin, 1 part myrrh.

Mix 2 parts St. John's wort, 1 part camphor, 1 part juniper and ½ part sage*. 

1 part juniper, 1 part sage*, ½ part elderberry og ½ part tansy.

Calendula, lavender, rose, orange peels, woodruff, pine needles, a bit of clover, cinnamon, and coriander.

Camphor, cinnamon, frankincense, myrrh, sandalwood.

Benzoin, dragon’s blood, frankincense, myrrh, sandalwood, sea salt.

Cinnamon, clovers, coriander seeds.

Dragon’s blood powder and frankincense.

Mastic resin tears or powder, myrtle leaves and berries, rose petals.

(* I think I should note that I use common garden sage that I grow myself, and not white sage.)

Instead of herb bundles, you can also make incense sticks yourself. To make your own incense sticks, you’ll need: Dry wood or charcoal, aroma of your choice, resin or SAP, thin wooden sticks.

Use a mortar and pestle to make dry wood or coal into powder. Here you can add plants or spices.

Once in powder form, set some of the powder to the side for later, as for the rest, add your essential oils to your mix. Depending on how many sticks you’re making and the amount of powder you have. You can mx this in a bigger pan.

Add some water to get the appropriate consistency, your mixture must be moldable.

Take your wooden sticks and a piece of your mixture and roll it onto the stick till it’s covered, leave a piece of blank wood at the bottom so you can hold the stick.

Sprinkle the incense stick with the powder you saved earlier.

Let the incense sticks dry in a cool dark place for about a week.

Cleansing with Fire

Fire is purifying and protective, but watch out, fire is such a strong cleansing method, it could burn your house down to a crisp and cleanse it that way, haha. Carry a candle light through the room. Go left three times through your spaces with your candle light, while calling the power of light and the sun's rays to warm and light your home.

Outdoors, you can light up your entire plot with torches. Sing and pray as you walk with your light in the dark. To cleanse with fire outside is done after sunset.

Create a blessing oil composed of frankincense and benzoin to a blend of olive and jojoba oils. Use either the essential oils or ground resin. Dress white and blue candles with the oil and burn to cleanse the atmosphere.

At witches' circles, parties, Litha, and bonfires, you can throw used amulets and things you want rid of into the fire. It will burn up and release you from the binding.

You can cleanse amulets, gifts, objects, clothes, etc. by spreading them in the sun and letting it shine through them. Turn them once in a while and take them in before the dusk falls. The objects can also hang in a window where the sun's rays fall. If a vigorous cleansing is required, this is repeated three days in a row.

Use mugwort and weave a wreath while tying everything you want to rid yourself of in the mugwort wreath. Burn the wreath in the fire and then jump over the fire**. Fill the space you want to cleanse, with the freedom you have been given.

(** Depending on how big your fire is, what you're wearing and your jumping abilities and comfortability to jumping over fire, proceed with caution.)

Cleansing with Sound

Ghosts are typically harmless and won’t do anything, so just leave them be. However, if you have a particularly annoying ghost, take your broom and sweep it out from each corner while yelling, yapping, and scolding.

Tuning a singing bowl as you meditate will cleanse a space and yourself. Generally, music and song will do the same. Fill a room up with noise and song and you’ll cleanse the space right out. Keeping the doors and windows open is best.

Hanging bells by the front door will keep spirits and unwanted energies out every time you open the door.

Hanging wind chimes around your property protects your space and scares unwanted spirits away.

Cleansing with your Broomstick

Broomsticks are not only meant for flying, but also cleaning, they are literally sweeping the dirt away. But broomsticks are excellent spiritual cleansers. Some spells call for ritual brooms that get used once, then destroyed. Other spells call for a regular broom to be used for spellwork.

Get a large bucket of spring water or use other cleansing water and let your broomstick rest in the water for a few hours. Then splash the water over the room you want to clean. Preferably during the emission of loud noises that cause unwanted spirits to flee.

Use the broom to sweep the dust from West to East. Collect the dust and burn it, toshing the ashes outdoors, you can complete the ritual by mopping the floors.

This includes a single use, ritual, broom that will get disassembled. Use any of the following botanicals: rosemary, hyssop, fennel, cedar, sage*, and vervain. Arrange the botanicals onto the bottom of a branch of birch (or any branch can be used), visualizing, charging and knotting. Sprinkle with cleansing water then sweep the area that needs cleansing. When done, disassemble the broom outside, away from the cleansed area. Bury the components in the ground or toss them into running water, flowing away from you.

Cleansing with Dirt, Herbs, Spit, and more

Soil covers everything. You can bury amulets, letters and anything else you want to rid yourself of in the ground. Go to a peaceful place, bury the object and feel the earth release you from it. Cover the ground with stones, moss, grass or branches so that the spot is invisible.

You can also cleanse with herbs by having them in the house. Rose geraniums and woodland wreaths will renew the air and their mild scents will chase away evil spirits.

Place a clove of garlic on each window. If the energies, ghosts, or spirits are particularly annoying, place a whole garlic. The garlic will stay there overnight, or more. If you feel the need is there, take the garlic the next day and burn them outside.

If you find a coin, stone or amulet, spit on both sides of it before using it. It cleanses the amulet and removes any bound energies.

If you have an amulet or object that you want purified or charged with your energy, hold it between your thumb and ring finger. Now sneeze over the object, turn it over and sneeze again. Now your energy is charged into the object.

You can also cleanse a space, person, or object with crystals. Clear quartz or selenite is a good option for cleansing.

Hang garlic, silver crosses, and/or rosary over the door frame to keep ghosts and unwanted energies out.

Keep a dish of salt and place your amulets and jewellry on it overnight to cleanse them, the salt will absorb the stale or unwanted energies. Toss the salt out in the trash when you’re done.

Cleans by literally cleaning your tools, sometimes they just need a bit of soap and visualization with it. While you’re at it, give them a good rub with your hands, you can cleanse through touch.

Since evil spirits and demons cannot cross salt, it is the best available protection. Sprinkle salt around your home or create a circle. If the evil spirit or demon is particularly annoying, use black salt for extra potency. 

Cleanse by intimidating your object, stare at it intensely and visualize your stare scaring the stale energies or unwanted energies out of the object.

Open your windows and let the fresh air cleanse your space.

Closing Notes

Thank you so much for reading this extremely long post, I hope you got some inspirations on how to cleanse your space! It should be noted, these are different ways I cleanse, but there are so many more ways to cleanse than what I have written here!

Also, hopefully, There won't be any spelling errors, if there is, please forgive me, especially for grammatical errors as English is not my native language.

Blessed day!! :D

(Image credit: Me! I drew this :) )

[witchofhellskitchen]

Pt. 3 Unseen Ties // When Lights Fades, Daredevil x Witch!Reader

a/n hi guysss welcome to chapter three!! one of my favorite scenes so far is apart of this chapter. hope you all enjoy it as much as i did!

word count: 4.6k+

warnings: none really, just typical marvel stuff

series masterlist

ao3

The city breathed wrong tonight. There was a pressure behind your ribs, like something sacred had been inverted—turned just slightly askew. Enough to make the air feel thinner. Untrustworthy.

You’d only meant to fetch more herbs. A quick errand. No complications. But halfway down the narrow alley that split behind your building, something pulled.

It wasn’t audible. It didn’t sting your nose like a scent. It was older than that—deeper. A magnetic ache humming beneath your sternum, in the place your magic lived.

You stopped walking. The sensation sharpened.

Then—just there, behind a rust-bitten dumpster, partially hidden beneath a torn concert flier and the sprawl of old graffiti—you saw it.

A sigil.

Same spiral. Same jagged lines that hooked in on themselves like the sketch of a predator’s grin.

You didn’t gasp. You didn’t freeze. Your breath left quietly, already expecting what your eyes had found.

This wasn't a coincidence.

Someone—or something—was planting them. Mapping the city like a predator claiming ground.

You didn’t hesitate this time.

With a shaking hand, you reached into your bag and pulled out the cloth you kept tucked near your emergency spell kit. You dropped to your knees, ignoring the bite of gravel beneath you, and began to scrub.

Hard.

Dirt caked your nails. Brick tore at your knuckles. The sigil resisted for a moment—holding its shape beneath the layers of rot and paint—but you leaned in harder. Whispered a sharp incantation beneath your breath, teeth clenched tight enough to ache.

You didn’t care who saw. This wasn’t the kind of magic you did in the open, but urgency overruled pride.

You poured rosemary water across the lines until the final curve dissolved, and with it, the hum in the air broke.

Not silence. But a release.

You staggered back up to your feet, wiping your palms on your coat, and turned for home with your pulse still drumming in your ears.

The alley behind your shop was unchanged—but when you stepped inside, you knew better.

Your wards didn’t ring.

They flinched.

The charm bundles above the door spun in slow, disjointed circles, brushing against each other like they couldn’t decide what they sensed. The air had weight now. Tension clinging to the walls like cobwebs.

You bolted the door and lit the black candle without hesitation. Your fingers trembled. Just slightly.

Books wouldn’t give you what you needed.

And the city had already gone quiet.

You needed something older.

You knelt at the altar and laid the pieces out one by one—bones, salt, obsidian. Each with a vibration of its own, faint but present. The wind pushed against the window panes like it wanted in. The candle flickered with the draft, but held.

That would have to do.

You sat cross-legged and lit the dried herbs. The smoke unfurled slowly and sweetly, curling upward in a shape you didn’t recognize. The obsidian pulsed at the edges. Your heart followed its rhythm.

Your fingers pressed to your chest.

“Through the veil,” you whispered. “Come through the veil and speak.”

The smoke thickened and your breath slowed. The flame stilled.

Then, something shifted.

Your vision narrowed. The room faded.

You saw flashes first: not clear images, but jagged bursts of motion that struck like lightning across the surface of your vision. A man in red—no, not a man. A mimic. It wore Matt’s suit, but it didn’t wear it the way he did. It inhabited it like a skin borrowed for violence. The stance was wrong. The balance of its weight—too centered, too still. Its head barely moved as it fought, like it didn’t need to think or feel, only strike. The blows it dealt were fast, mechanical. Precise in a way no real person could be. You felt it in your bones, the difference: Matt fought like a man carrying guilt, mercy tucked beneath every punch. This figure moved like a blade thrown through the air—uncaring of where it landed, only that it hit. You watched it crush bone, split flesh. No hesitation. No grief. Just execution.

You gasped and the image slid sideways.

Then came the second vision, heavier than the first. Fisk. Seated high above the city, not on a throne, but something colder—marble and steel, the kind of structure built not for comfort, but control. He didn’t move. He didn’t have to. His presence alone bent the air, thickened it like syrup in your lungs. Around him, glass walls framed the skyline, but the light didn’t reach him. Shadows clung to his shoulders like a mantle. He sat in silence, unmoving, his hands folded like a judge waiting to pass a sentence. And beneath him—the city bled. You saw it clearly now: alleys running red, neon signs flickering over broken pavement, people hunched in doorways as fear seeped through the cracks in every street. His gaze didn’t falter. He watched it all from above, untouched, unfeeling. Not a king, but a god. One made of power. And Hell’s Kitchen knelt beneath him—wounded, and waiting.

Last came the shadow. It had no face, no true form—just a writhing mass of dark intent, coiled like smoke that refused to dissipate. It hovered behind everything else: behind the mimic, behind Fisk, behind the bloodied skyline. But it wasn’t passive. It hungered . You felt it instantly—a gnawing, primal need that gripped your chest and wouldn’t let go. Not just for destruction, but for revenge . This thing had been banished once. Shut out. Forgotten. And now, as the city weakened, it had found cracks in the walls. It wanted back in. Not just to conquer… but to consume . Its rage wasn’t loud or wild—it was cold and deliberate, sharpened by centuries of waiting. It whispered. And in that whisper, you heard every spirit you’d ever helped pass on cry out in warning. This wasn’t just darkness. It was hunger sharpened by memory. And it wanted everything that had once cast it out—starting with the city. Starting with him.

The visions folded in on each other, pressing against your ribs like too much water in too small a space. You tried to breathe but you couldn’t. Your head reeled with dizziness and confusion.

Then—

A hand on your shoulder.

It wasn’t rough. But it cut through the trance like a branch cracking underfoot in a dead forest.

Your breath seized.

You flinched so sharply you nearly tipped sideways, catching yourself with a palm against the cold floor. Smoke hung heavy in the room, curling in strange shapes that warped the candlelight. Every shadow looked wrong—stretched too long, bent in on itself. It clung to your skin like fog laced with static.

Behind you, steady and quiet, stood the man you’d nearly ferried to the veil.

You froze. For a second, your body didn’t register where you were. Your knees ached from the floorboards, but the rest of you felt light, unmoored. Your chest rose in erratic jolts—breaths too shallow, too fast, not enough to ground you.

The vision was still there, stuck behind your eyes like ash.

His head tilted slightly.

His brows had drawn together, his mouth parted—caught between concern and hesitation. He couldn’t hear the full scope of your gasp, you knew that. But he felt it. The change in the room. The residual fear thick in the air. The stillness pressing hard against the walls.

You didn’t speak.

But your silence wasn’t empty. It trembled.

He didn’t step forward. But the tension in his body shifted—coiled not in readiness, but in something more uncertain. Something protective. He couldn’t name it, but you saw it settle behind his ribs like a reflex: the urge to help.

And for once, it wasn’t distance between you.

Instead, static.

He stepped back slightly. The rubber tip of his cane tapped against the wood with a soft thud.

“What… was that?” His voice rasped around the edges, still worn from days of strain. There was a crackle to it, like a radio catching static.

You turned your face toward the altar, trying to gather yourself. “A divination,” you managed. Your lips felt dry. “I needed clarity.”

A pause. Then: “Clarity about what?”

Your hands curled in your lap. “Something dangerous.”

That was all you could say. The rest still clung to your throat like smoke.

He didn’t respond at first, but his breath shifted. You could sense him cataloguing your pulse, the tremor in your voice, the way the candlelight cast uneasy shapes against the ceiling.

And then—you saw it.

The change in his expression. Not from confusion. From fear.

Not of what you’d done. Of what it meant.

“This is the first time I’ve seen you scared,” he said quietly.

You didn’t look at him. Just nodded, once.

“That’s because I am.”

A pause, then: “Should I be?”

You didn’t have the answer. Not really. The Tower card still echoed in your chest like a dropped stone.

You started to speak. Stopped.

He didn’t press.

Instead, he stepped closer—not enough to crowd you, just enough to show he was still listening. Still here.

“I don’t know what you saw,” he said, voice low, “but I know what it feels like when something is about to go wrong. And something about this place—about tonight—feels wrong.”

He was right. The magic hadn’t lifted. Not entirely. It lingered, waiting for movement.

You turned your head slowly. “You weren’t in the vision,” you said. “But someone was… pretending to be you.”

You felt the shift immediately.

His spine straightened. His fingers curled tight around the cane.

You didn’t elaborate. You didn’t have to.

The meaning passed between you in a single breath: your face, your name, your legacy—used by something else. Something hollow.

“How sure are you?” he asked.

“I don’t get visions often,” you said. “But when I do… I trust them.”

Silence filled the room again. This time, it didn’t feel heavy. It felt full.

You couldn't call it trust. But something that looked like it, if you didn’t stare too hard.

He stepped forward again—bending carefully at the knees, bruised as he was—and picked up the obsidian from where it had rolled to the edge of your altar rug. He turned it over in his hand without recoil. Just quiet fascination.

Then, slowly, he looked toward you.

Not by instinct or sound. Something else—like the absence of your words had gravity.

“I didn’t expect you to be…” He trailed off, then gave a small, almost self-deprecating huff. “Like this.”

You were still trembling, though it had lessened. You met his gaze, even if he couldn’t meet yours.

“Neither did I,” you murmured.

You didn’t see him the next day. Or the one after that.

It wasn't unusual. The man moved like a tide—drifting in and out of the apothecary with no rhythm you could predict. Sometimes he stayed long enough for tea. Other times, he vanished before the candles finished burning down. You never asked where he went. And he never explained.

But you always felt it when he was coming back.

The bell above the door gave a muted chime—low and listless, as if even it had grown weary of violence and long nights. The sound drifted across the shop and dissolved into the silence like smoke curling into still water.

You looked up.

He stood in the doorway, his silhouette framed by the muted gray of the overcast morning. No blood this time. No limp. But the fury he carried moved ahead of him, thick as storm wind. It wrapped around his shoulders and clung to his spine, unseen but unmistakable.

Each step forward was slow—measured in that way rage demands, the kind that simmers instead of shouts. His shoulders were tight, his jaw locked, every muscle held with precision like a man trying to keep from fracturing under the weight of what he couldn’t control.

You said nothing. Just watched as he entered fully, footsteps soft but certain. His cane struck the floor with quiet taps, steadying him in name only. It wasn’t exhaustion that weighed him down this time. It was fury. Cold, bright, and blistering.

He didn’t come to the altar or the counter. Just stood there for a breath, then veered toward the center of the shop—right where the energy in the room felt most taut. You tracked his movements instinctively, pulse tightening as he finally came to a stop.

His breath was uneven, not from fatigue, but from restraint. Like every inhale scraped against something raw inside his chest. His shoulders rose once, sharp and deliberate, before settling again beneath the weight of whatever news he carried.

When he spoke, his voice was low—steady, but stripped of any pretense. “They let him out.”

A chill threaded down your spine.

You didn’t need to ask who.

He turned his head slightly, just enough that the angle of light caught the edge of his jaw. “Fisk,” he said. “They cut him a deal. The FBI. Said he gave them something—‘valuable intelligence’—and now he’s not behind bars anymore. He’s in a penthouse. Guarded. Comfortable.”

The venom in his voice wasn’t loud, but it was unmistakable. It clung to each word like iron filings to a magnet.

Your stomach knotted. “What do you mean… a penthouse?”

“I mean he’s being protected,” Matt snapped. “By the same people who were supposed to hold him accountable.”

He broke away then—paced a short line near the shelves, turning sharply like the motion itself was the only thing keeping him from exploding. His cane thudded softly with each step, though he barely seemed aware of it.

“I thought putting him away meant something. I thought—” His voice cracked for the first time, so briefly it might’ve gone unnoticed. “I thought I was done chasing him through this nightmare.”

You watched him carefully, noting the way his hands curled against the cane’s handle. Not trembling. Just taut with the effort of staying whole.

His voice dropped lower. “They’re calling him a hero. Praising him for ‘helping the system.’ But he’s not helping anyone. He’s reorganizing. Rebuilding his empire with cleaner signatures and federal clearance.”

He stopped moving. Just stood there, head lowered, face a shadow of itself.

“He murdered people,” he murmured. “He destroyed families. And now he gets sunlight and silence and fresh linens while the rest of us...” He trailed off.

The rage that followed sat heavy in the space between you. Not a firestorm, but something colder—like ice cracking beneath the surface of a frozen lake.

You stepped closer, careful with your silence. Not because he frightened you. But because his grief did.

“I’ve seen people like him before,” you said quietly. “Monsters in tailored suits. The ones who smile while the world burns.”

He looked toward your voice. Not directly at you, but through you—like trying to anchor himself in something he couldn’t quite name.

You hesitated, then said, “I saw something. A vision. Before the prison. I didn’t understand it all at first, but now…”

His head lifted a fraction.

“There’s something ancient in this,” you said. “Something bigger than crime or politics. The balance in the city—it’s unraveling. And I think Fisk is part of it. Maybe even the reason.”

Matt went still. Fully still. Like every part of him froze beneath the weight of those words.

“I know how it sounds,” you admitted. “But I can feel it. Something spiritual is shifting here. And it’s not random.”

He stood in silence for a long moment. Then finally asked, voice dry, “You think the city has a soul?”

You met his gaze, even if he couldn’t see it. “I’ve always known it.”

Something flickered across his face then—not belief, but something that looked close.

Fear. Recognition. The quiet ache of a man who, for just one moment, might have considered that you were right.

The candle between you burned low, wax pooling across the edge of the glass like melted bones.

Then, in a voice so quiet you almost missed it, he said, “I used to believe that too.”

And for the first time since he’d entered the room, his anger cracked just enough to show what had been holding it all together, grief.

The candle between you had burned nearly to the base.

At some point in the quiet that followed, you’d told him everything. About the sigils—how the first one appeared behind your shop, how another had drawn you down that alley just days ago. You hadn’t meant to say so much, but it had come out easily, carried by the same heaviness that lived in both of your chests. He hadn’t interrupted. Just listened, jaw tense, nodding slightly at each piece like he was filing it away. He hadn’t asked what it all meant. But the worry etched into his brow said he was already bracing for the answer.

The man leaned forward, elbows on his knees again, head bowed—not from reverence, but from the weight of choice. His jaw was clenched. His fists tighter now. You could feel the thoughts building in his chest before he spoke.

Finally, without lifting his head, he said, “If I kill him… it ends.”

You didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

He breathed out hard. “I know it’s wrong. I know what I’ve sworn. But… how many more people have to die so I can keep pretending I’m better than him?”

You sat with it—not shocked. Just quiet.

Because you’d sensed this coming the moment he stepped through the door. You knew the shape of a man who had run out of lines to draw.

But you didn’t stay silent.

“That’s not what makes you better than him,” you said, voice low but steady. “It’s not the vow. It’s the fact that it costs you something to break it. That you’d feel it afterward.”

His jaw tightened. You could see the war behind his eyes, the ache between who he was and who the world kept forcing him to become.

“You think Fisk has regrets?” you added. “You think he wrestles with morality before crushing someone under his boot?”

He didn’t answer, didn’t have to. His jaw clenched at your words.

You leaned forward slightly. “If you kill him, it won’t make you like him. But it will make you carry him. Forever. Are you ready for that?”

He looked away.

And that told you everything.

“I’m tired,” he said.

His voice cracked on the word. 

You looked at him—really looked. Not just at the bruises or the swelling or the places where the city had carved him raw. But at the grief stretched thin across his ribs, the hunger for justice that had started to corrode his faith.

“It’s not just about him anymore,” The man went on. “It’s about what he’s letting in. What he is. Every time he climbs higher, something pulls up with him.”

You felt that truth in your gut. You’d seen it in your vision. That shadow trailing Fisk like smoke, waiting to take shape.

He lifted his head slowly, blind eyes drifting upward as if searching for some distant answer. “If taking him out meant saving this city... I don’t know if I could stop myself.”

Your breath caught—not in judgment, but because you saw a man standing at the edge of losing everything he believed in.

You leaned forward, voice calm but sincere. “I’m not here to tell you what to do. If you choose to cross that line, I’ll respect it. But it has to be a choice you can live with—one that won’t eat away at your soul.”

He turned his face slightly toward you, tension thick in the air.

He swallowed hard. “And if I can’t cross it?”

You met his gaze steadily. “Then we find another way.”

It was the first time you’d seen him falter like this—his anger folding inward, not into rage, but into guilt.

He sat back again, slowly, one hand brushing the cane beside his leg.

You let him have the silence a little longer.

Then you stood.

“Come on,” you said, gently. “You mentioned earlier that you wanted to see where I found the sigils.”

His head tilted slightly, listening. “Now?”

“They’re not going to wait for sunrise.”

He stood slower than usual. Still stiff. Still healing. But determined.

The two of you left the shop without fanfare, the door sealed behind you with a whispered phrase. No one saw you go. The city barely noticed.

But you felt its weight in the air.

The city was shifting under your feet—groaning like something stirring beneath the asphalt.

The pace was slow.

Matt didn’t admit it, but every few blocks you saw the way his shoulders tensed when he stepped too hard. He used the cane—though not in the way most did. It wasn’t for guidance. It was rhythm. It helped him track the sound of his own body, and mark the tempo of the street underfoot.

You led him first to the wall behind your shop.

“I scrubbed the mark out,” you told him. “But I can still feel where it was.”

Matt stepped into the space like it held its own weather system. He didn’t speak. Just turned his face slightly and tilted his head, listening.

“It was etched low,” you said. “Deliberate. Something summoning. Or binding. Not mine.”

Matt’s fingers brushed along the brick wall, slow and careful. “There’s residue,” he muttered. “Not chemical. But… wrong. Like the air’s pulling away from it.”

He pressed a hand to the wall and stayed like that for a beat.

Then he exhaled.

“Show me the other place.”

You moved through the alley in careful steps, following the pull of your senses rather than any street map. Matt followed without hesitation—his stride steady, but clearly demanding more effort than he let on.

You stopped finally. The shadows here clung heavier to the corners.

Matt paused in the threshold. “It’s here,” he said before you even pointed.

You didn’t touch it.

Neither did Matt.

But you both stood there, silent.

“I’ve heard of markings like this before,” Matt said, voice low. “Old buildings. Places that burned down. There was one in Hell’s Kitchen… years ago. I thought it was just a gang symbol.”

“It’s not,” you said.

“No,” he agreed. “It’s older than that.”

You looked at him. His face was tilted slightly toward the charred symbol, unreadable—but present. Listening.

“What do we do?” he asked, not to himself, but to you.

You both stood in silence after he asked that, the weight of the city pressing down, the street lights flickering as if unsure what was coming next. You didn’t have an answer yet, but it had to start here somehow, with the two of you together. 

The door clicked softly behind you as you stepped back into the quiet warmth of the apothecary. The familiar scent of dried herbs and beeswax wrapped around you like a comforting cloak.

The man followed, his cane tapping a slow, steady rhythm against the floorboards. The weight of the day’s tension still lingered in the air, but now it felt softer, less suffocating. Something between you had shifted.

You glanced over at the shelves, cluttered with jars of herbs and bundles of dried flowers. “Ever actually use any of this stuff?” you asked, raising an eyebrow.

The man’s head tilted slightly, as if weighing the question. “Not really, maybe only in a quick pinch,” he said with a half-smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Nothing fancy.”

You grinned, stepping over to a small wooden box filled with tightly wrapped bundles of herbs. “Well, if you’re serious about healing, I could teach you a thing or two. Starting with something simple — like making a decent cup of tea.”

He chuckled — a sound you realized you hadn’t heard from him before, light and easy. “That might be the kind of magic I actually need.”

You busied yourself at the counter, filling the kettle and grabbing two of your favorite mugs. He leaned against the counter nearby, still stiff from the day’s hunt but moving with more ease than before.

After a beat, he said quietly, “You know, you don’t even know my name.”

You looked over, a slow smile spreading across your face. “Nope. And you don’t know mine.”

He shook his head, amused. “Strangers, then. That makes this... interesting.”

You arched an eyebrow playfully. “Alright then, mystery man. Let me take a guess. Something strong. Something old-fashioned... Daniel? No. Peter? James?" 

He laughed softly, the sound genuine. “Getting warmer.”

You handed him his mug, your fingers brushing briefly. The touch lingered — no magic, just something real.

You tilted your head, eyes narrowing. “I don’t know… You don’t strike me as a Steve. Or a Mark. Definitely not a Trevor.”

He made a face like he’d been insulted. “Trevor?”

“I said definitely not ,” you teased. Then, after a pause, you squinted like you were genuinely trying to read something in the lines of his face. “David?”

“Close.”

You leaned in just a little. “Daniel?”

He huffed softly through his nose. “You’re getting colder.”

Your smile curved without thinking. “I’m a witch, not a mind reader.”

“That’s not what you told the woman who came in for a love spell a few days ago.”

You let out a quiet laugh, brushing your fingers against the worn edge of the counter. “I told her she didn’t need a spell. Just better taste in men.”

He smiled then. Small. Real.

The quiet lingered, but not in the heavy way it usually did. This time it was warmer. Filled with something more human.

Then you asked, gently, “So what is your name?”

He didn’t answer right away. His hand rested near the cane leaning against the counter, fingers lightly tapping the handle like he was thinking something through.

Finally, he said, “Matt.”

You repeated it once under your breath, just to test the shape of it. “Matt.”

It suited him.

His jaw shifted. “I used to be Matthew.”

You caught the distinction. And didn’t question it.

Another silence. Then, more quietly, he said, “I don’t usually tell people that. Not anymore.”

His phrasing made you question how long he’d been in this state, and how long he planned on staying in it.

You looked at him carefully, your voice softer now. “But you told me.”

He nodded once, as if the decision still surprised even him.

You watched him for a beat. “Why?”

Matt’s face turned slightly toward the window, even though his gaze never tracked anything beyond it. His expression was unreadable again—but not cold. More like he was sifting through something complicated.

“Because I think you see people,” he said. “Not just what they show you.”

Your pulse kicked slightly at the honesty in his voice. Not dramatic. Just true.

“Or maybe,” he added, “because you didn’t flinch when you saw what’s underneath.”

You were quiet. Then said, “You mean the suit.”

He nodded.

You crossed your arms, leaning a little against the shelf behind you. “I don’t care what you wear. I only care who you are in it.”

Matt tilted his head like he was cataloging the words—filing them in a place that didn’t get a lot of light.

“I’m still figuring that out,” he said after a moment. “What part of me is real. And which part I want to keep.”

You didn’t answer with wisdom or platitudes. Just stepped closer and placed your hand lightly next to his—steady, grounding.

“Whoever you are,” you said, “you don’t have to figure it out alone.”

Matt’s fingers curled, not around your hand, but just enough that you could feel the answer in the motion.

For the first time in days, the city outside felt a little less heavy. Its usual weight of shadows and sirens softened, as if the walls themselves had breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Making the air around you both feel a touch lighter, a little less burdened by the darkness pressing in.

[witchofhellskitchen]

Pt. 2 What Remains In Silence // When Light Fades, Daredevil x Witch!Reader

a/n ok so im too excited not to post this so soon lol. I wasn't expecting ANYONE to find my first chapter let alone have people actually take interest in it! I will eventually get on a posting schedule but enjoy this little spree for now lol

word count: 5k

series masterlist

ao3

Warning: Matt losing his faith and renouncing god

The ringing was worse than the silence.

It sat behind Matt’s eyes, high and thin like a frequency the world wasn’t meant to hear. A sharp, constant whine, not unlike feedback from a microphone—except it wasn’t coming from anything outside him. It was him now. A thread of noise stitched into the meat of his brain. It pulsed through his teeth, buzzed in the bones of his jaw, made the back of his skull feel like it had been cracked open and stitched shut with wire.

He couldn’t hear the room. Couldn’t place the sound of footsteps or a heartbeat or the familiar shifting of air around corners. Even the quiet was strange. Flattened. Like the entire world had been padded in thick cotton and left somewhere far away.

But he could smell.

That was the first clue this wasn’t the church basement, or a hospital, or any other place he might’ve expected to wake up half-dead.

The air was dense and fragrant—sweet in places, bitter in others. Smoldering smoke lingered in the corners. Not the acrid tang of cigarettes or incense for show. This was something else. A rooty, resinous weight clung to the back of his throat. Myrrh, he thought, foggily. Burned, not crushed. There were hints of beeswax. Dried herbs. Crystals, maybe—quartz or selenite. The energy of them hung low, humming against his skin like static.

The blanket wrapped around him was thick, old. Not coarse like military wool, but worn soft by time and care. Beneath him, a mattress, but something built low to the ground, with a wooden frame. Handmade. No metal parts. It creaked gently under his shifting weight.

Matt blinked against the darkness—not that it made a difference. He pressed his palms flat against the mattress, grounding himself through touch. No IV. No tape on his skin. His ribs throbbed in warning. His lip was split, and when he moved his jaw, he could feel the tight tug of a butterfly bandage along his cheekbone.

Someone had patched him up. Gently. He could still feel the residue of a thick salve cover some of his more impressive wounds.

He turned his head toward the scent of smoke. It was stronger to his left—near what he imagined must be a doorway or partition. A bead curtain, maybe. He could hear the faintest tick of something glass behind it—jars, bottles, maybe wind chimes shifting with a draft. But no voices. No television. No nuns. No nurses.

Just the ringing in his skull.

And something else… subtle. A kind of pull. Like gravity, but sideways.

He sat up too fast.

The world tilted—not visually, but in his chest, his gut. Disorientation bloomed hot beneath his skin. His balance buckled. He reached out, hand catching the edge of a low wooden table beside the mattress. Something ceramic shifted beneath his fingers. A bowl? No—small, smooth, with a handle. A mug.

Still warm.

Someone had been there.

Someone had left it for him.

The air carried movement. Not sound—he couldn’t hear anything through the noise in his head—but vibration. Footsteps, faint as breath, moved across the floor in slow arcs. Deliberate. Even. Not the pacing of a stranger on edge, but the rhythm of someone comfortable in the space. Someone who belonged here.

Matt’s fingers found the mug’s handle. He didn’t lift it. He didn’t even bring it to his lips. But he held onto it, anchored by the weight and the warmth and the fact that someone had thought to bring it to him at all.

The footsteps stopped near the curtain.

He couldn’t see her, but he knew it was her. The person who’d stitched his wounds and dressed him in clean clothes. The one who’d tucked him beneath a real blanket instead of leaving him in the gutter. Her presence stretched into the air like a tide moving in—silent but full of intent.

She didn’t speak. Not that he would be able to hear much of it anyways.

Didn’t approach.

She just stood there, still and patient, as if waiting for him to come back to himself on his own terms.

He exhaled, slowly. Tried again to orient.

The room around him smelled like a place that had never been touched by fluorescence. There were wood shelves somewhere near the corner—he could feel their edges in the air, their shapes pressed into the atmosphere by heat and shadow. Glass bottles sat on them, catching candlelight and refracting it in soft pulses.

And there was something else… a feeling. Not sound. Not scent. But energy. A subtle hum in the walls, like the space itself had memory. Like the building had its own heartbeat.

Matt’s body ached. His head swam. The ringing hadn’t stopped. But beneath it—barely there—he felt the ghost of something else.

Safety.

Not comfort. Not softness. Just a place that had been built for healing. Not hospitals. Not churches.

Something older.

The curtain rustled, and the footsteps began again—this time retreating. Still slow. Still deliberate.

Matt leaned into the silence she left behind.

And for a moment, the pain in his body seemed less important than the question now gnawing at the edge of his mind.

Where the hell am I?

And…

What kind of person lives like this?

The girl’s voice trembled beneath the soft weight of her insecurity. Sixteen, maybe. Her sleeves were pulled over her knuckles and her cheeks were blotched from more than just irritation. She held herself like she expected to be dismissed.

You didn’t rush her.

“Witch Hazel and chamomile,” you said gently, reaching for the shallow clay dish beside your workbench. “You’ll want to steep them overnight in moon water. Not the stuff they sell in bottles. Collect your own. Let it sit under a waxing crescent.”

The girl nodded, lips pressed thin like she didn’t want to speak in case her voice cracked.

You packed the herbs into a cloth sachet and tied it off with blue thread. Then you added a little jar of salve—your own blend, infused with rosehip oil and plantain, cooled with a quartz shard for balance.

“No mirror work,” you added softly. “Not yet. Let the skin calm on its own. Speak kindly to it—even if you don’t believe the words yet.”

The girl’s eyes glistened. She blinked hard, shoved a crumpled bill into the jar near the register, and left with the sachet clutched like a secret.

You waited until the door clicked shut and the bell above it settled back into silence.

Then you breathed.

The air inside the apothecary held more weight tonight. Not heavy. Just full—like something in the walls was listening harder than usual.

You moved slowly, restoring the herbs to their shelves, brushing crumbs of lavender from the counter. Every step carried the memory of intention. Every breath tied you to the space like thread.

And still… he hadn’t moved.

Not physically. But something in the back room had shifted.

It was the way the flame on your altar had bent an inch to the side.

The way the charm bundles above the doorway had rustled, not with wind—but with attention.

He was awake.

You didn’t need to check. You felt it in your sternum. A ripple through the thread that connected all things. Your wards hadn’t flared. He wasn’t afraid. Just… still trying to find his edges.

You reached for the kettle and poured a cup of the valerian blend. Stronger than the girl’s mix you offered her earlier. Root-heavy. Grounding.

You carried it through the curtain, moving carefully—no sudden motions, no unnecessary noise, just presence. He was sitting up now, his breathing low and shallow. You didn’t look at him directly. Not out of avoidance—but respect.

You placed the cup beside him on the table, then stepped back.

Didn’t speak.

Didn’t hover.

You just… let him be.

Healing didn’t start with questions. It started with stillness.

So you gave it to him.

And when you felt the thread between you tug—taut and trembling like something about to break—you didn’t pull.

You waited.

The sun hadn’t risen yet. That pale, liminal hour just before dawn had begun to touch the edges of the windows—thin grey light stretching through the panes like reluctant fingers. The apothecary didn’t hum in the morning the way it did at night. It held its breath. The candles had burned low, their wax pools congealing in soft spirals. The myrrh had long gone cold in its dish. Silence clung to the walls like soot.

The man you had saved stood in the doorway between the back room and the main floor, rigid with indecision.

His jaw was tight, but it wasn’t the pain from his injuries. It was the pain of something deeper. The ache of pride trying to stand where it had already broken.

You stood near the altar, quietly tying a bundle of cloth around a charm—something protective. Stabilizing. You didn’t offer it to him outright, not at first. You knew better than to crowd a man like that. His breath was shallow but steady, his body still healing from whatever hell he’d crawled out of. And yet, even in his exhaustion, there was a heat radiating from him—like anger carefully leashed behind his ribs.

He fumbled once with his hand, then again—low, to his right side. His fingers brushed over empty air, searching for something familiar. Something grounding.

You didn’t speak. You just moved toward the wall near the door and picked up a cane. The one you’d polished by hand the night before. Smooth maple wood, sturdy and warm to the touch. It had belonged to your grandmother during her last years—though even then, she’d never truly leaned on it. She’d used it more like a warding rod. A tool. A weapon if needed.

You walked slowly toward him. No sudden steps. No announcement.

When you reached his side, you gently slid the cane into his open palm.

He took it, fingers wrapping around the leather grip. It fit as if made for him.

The man's posture shifted by degrees. Not relief. Not gratitude. Just… stabilization. His knuckles stayed white around the handle, like it was the only thing tethering him to the earth.

He didn’t say thank you.

You didn’t expect him to.

You reached into your apron pocket and pulled out the wrapped bundle. Small. Cloth dyed with crushed elderberries, tied in a simple knot. The contents inside shifted softly—a charm bundle, a bit of salt, wormwood for clarity. Something to keep him grounded if the silence didn’t pass. If the ringing swallowed him whole.

You offered it without words.

He didn’t reach for it.

His chin dipped once—barely perceptible—but he made no move.

“If the silence doesn’t pass,” you said, your voice quiet but firm, “come back.”

A breath passed between you.

Then: “It will,” he muttered, not quite looking at you. “I don’t need this.”

You didn’t argue.

You only lowered your hand and returned the bundle to your pocket.

The man turned toward the door. His steps were uneven but steady. The cane tapped softly as he navigated through the front room, pausing once at the threshold—not as if waiting, but as if listening. His head tilted slightly to the left, as though the noise inside him had shifted.

You wondered, just for a moment, if he could feel the pulse of your wards brushing his skin. If some part of him, buried deep beneath training and trauma and the rigid bones of faith, recognized that he’d stepped through something older than protection.

But he said nothing.

And then he was gone.

The door closed behind him with a low creak and a whisper of air.

You stood in the middle of the shop, hands at your sides, and let the quiet take shape around you again.

The days that followed thickened like spoiled milk.

You opened the shop as usual—lit your altar, swept the floor with mugwort water, tied fresh bells above the doorframe—but it all felt like holding back a tide with your bare hands. The shop still smelled of myrrh and lavender, but it no longer felt like sanctuary. Not fully.

You noticed a difference in your customers.

It was the little things: people who used to speak gently now muttered with clipped words. A delivery driver who usually joked with you stared too long at the altar near the register, eyes narrowed, as if sensing something he didn’t want to name. The plants in your window boxes wilted too fast, even under your care. The rain that had come on soft winds turned cold and biting, falling at odd hours like something was testing the city’s resolve.

Customers came in more frequently now, but their needs had shifted.

No one asked for healing balms or tinctures anymore. No one wanted charm bundles for sleep or teas for grief. They wanted protection. They wanted power. They whispered their requests like curses: hexes, bindings, spells to make someone disappear. Some of them brought photos, names scribbled on crumpled paper, bits of hair wrapped in napkins.

You refused the worst of it. Quietly. Gently.

But even that didn’t sit right.

You felt it like a film on your skin every time someone passed through the door—this new desperation. Not just fear, but suspicion. Restlessness. Rage, barely leashed.

One woman came in asking for something to make her boss “choke on his own words.” You offered her an uncrossing spell instead, wrapped in rosemary and white string. She didn’t say thank you.

That was the pattern now.

They came in angry and left disappointed. Or worse—satisfied.

You tried not to think about where some of your spells might end up.

Then, one afternoon near closing, a man stepped in that made your wards twitch the moment his boot crossed the threshold.

You knew him—by uniform, not by name. An off-duty officer of some kind. He'd come in a few months back with a wrist injury and a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. This time, he wasn’t smiling. No badge on display, but you felt it radiating from him—the assumption of authority. The quiet threat of it.

He wandered the shelves like he was bored, like he didn’t need anything, but was looking for something anyway. His energy was loud. Intrusive. Thick with the weight of someone used to having power, and not afraid to use it without cause.

Your fingers twitched over your apron pocket where you kept the protective sigils.

He stopped in front of the charm bundles.

“I want something that'll keep people in line,” he said, eyes scanning the jars without looking at you. “Make 'em think twice.”

You hesitated.

“Protection?” you asked carefully.

He looked up then. Met your gaze in a way that made your stomach twist. There was no real interest in his eyes. Just calculation.

“Something strong.”

You didn’t argue. Didn’t ask what he planned to do with it.

Instead, you stepped behind the counter and reached for a charm you’d made months ago—woven with thorns, mirror shards, and graveyard dirt. It had never been meant for protection. It was a banishment. But you wrapped it in red silk, added a sprig of rue, and tied it with black thread.

“Burn this in an open space,” you said, keeping your voice even. “And speak no names. It’ll clear anything that’s clinging.”

He grunted something that passed for thanks and left without paying.

You watched him go, your throat dry, and didn’t release the breath you were holding until his shadow disappeared down the street.

Your altar bells trembled for hours after.

That night, you didn’t sleep. Not really.

You felt it more clearly than ever—the city’s pulse was off-rhythm, off-center. The heart of the place you’d known since childhood had grown fractured. Like someone had pulled a stone from the foundation, and now the whole thing was tilting.

You didn’t know the name of the man who’d collapsed in your shop. You only knew him as a vigilante, the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. 

But the longer he stayed away, the more the seams of the city frayed.

You swept the threshold three times at midnight. You painted sigils in oil above every window. You carved a protective rune into the back of your own hand.

Still, when the rain came the next day, it felt less like weather and more like warning.

You started noticing other changes. The flicker in the shop’s main ward when no one passed through. Candles that wouldn’t stay lit. Dreams that broke off mid-sentence, like something had interrupted your ancestors before they could finish speaking.

But the sigil was the biggest, undeniable sign.

It wasn’t dramatic. Just a mark—scratched low on the back wall of the building, where the alley collected water and stray trash. At first glance, it could’ve been vandalism, or some teenager carving nonsense. But the lines were too precise. Too intentional.

You crouched beside it in the early morning light, breath held tight in your chest.

The shape was wrong. Not anything from your own traditions. Not protective. Not reverent. It didn’t belong to any known working—at least not any still practiced openly. It spiraled inward, crooked and sharp, like it wanted to catch something and drag it through.

You didn’t touch it.

But your stomach twisted with recognition anyway.

This was summoning work. Or maybe binding. Something old. Something that had been waiting.

You went inside and came back with salt, iron shavings, and rainwater infused with rue and blackthorn. You scrubbed the mark out slowly, muttering under your breath—not a spell, but something older. A plea.

Then, with shaking fingers, you drew a counter-sigil in blessed chalk and oil. A seal. You pressed your palm over it until the warmth of your skin anchored it to the stone.

Still, the energy didn’t clear completely. It lingered like smoke caught in your lungs.

Later, when you sat at your altar, your pendulum spun without your prompting. The quartz swung hard to the left, a motion you’d only seen once before—on the night your grandmother died.

You didn’t know what had etched that sigil. Or who.

But you knew what it meant.

Something that had once been cast out was finding its way back.

And whatever tether had kept it buried?

It was unraveling.

You thought the unease might pass. But the air in the shop remained heavy—charged, like it was holding its breath.

The bells above your altar began to tremble on their own. Not wildly, not constantly. Just enough to make you listen. A single chime here. A faint rattle there. It was like the veil had grown sensitive—more permeable. Thinner.

And then came the dreams.

Not visions. Not even messages.

Just silence, vast and crushing. Dreams where you stood in your childhood garden, all color bled from the world, and the herbs withered in your hands. Where the altar burned cold. Where your grandmother’s voice echoed down corridors that no longer existed.

You woke each time with a tightness in your throat and a bitter taste behind your teeth—like you'd swallowed the wrong kind of smoke.

Even your ancestors had grown quiet.

Not absent. But watchful. Like they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves. Like they were afraid of being noticed, too.

You burned Palo Santo daily. Reinforced every threshold and window with sigils drawn in moon water. You buried bones and iron nails at the corners of the shop, an old protection rite. Still, the shadows seemed to linger too long in the corners. You caught your own reflection moving when you hadn’t.

You weren’t paranoid. You knew the difference.

Paranoia came with doubt. This was certainty.

The city wasn’t just darkening. It was shifting. The very pattern of things—threads you’d felt under your skin since you were a child—were unraveling and retwisting themselves. Not naturally. Not even magically.

Deliberately.

And underneath it all, you could feel the weight of the sigil, even though you’d scrubbed it from the wall.

It had left a wound. Not in the brick, but in the fabric of the place, and something was still reaching through it.

The charm bundles hanging above the entrance stirred without wind. A single bell near the register gave one sharp chime, high and brittle. The myrrh on your altar extinguished itself mid-burn.

Then came the heat.

Not warm. Not comforting. But a sudden pressure behind your eyes, like a change in altitude. A warning that something was crossing through—something marked. The kind of energy that didn’t knock. It simply arrived.

You didn’t rush to the door.

You knew what it was before it opened.

It cracked inward slowly, dragging heavy against the frame. Rain blew in with it, soaking the threshold. And then, like a shadow cut loose from the storm, he stepped in.

Not quite the same man who had left.

He looked worse now, somehow. Hollowed out. His coat hung off one shoulder like it had lost the shape of his body. He wasn’t bleeding, but he looked like he had been—like something had already drained him and left the skin behind.

You didn’t speak. You didn’t move.

He took two slow steps forward, hands curled in tight fists at his sides. His jaw clenched. His eyes—sightless but still searching—tilted upward toward the ceiling like he needed help orienting himself. Like the room itself might offer some clue as to where the ground was.

You saw his lips move, just barely.

Then the sound came.

A harsh, almost inhuman growl—low in his throat, barely more than breath.

“Help me.”

He took another step. Then another.

And then, finally, he dropped to his knees.

Not gently.

He hit the floor hard enough that the altar bell trembled in response.

You approached slowly, not out of fear, but out of respect. Whatever had brought him back had broken something in him—and you knew better than to touch a wounded animal without letting it see you first.

He didn’t look up.

He just pressed his hands flat to the floor, head bowed like someone begging a god they didn’t believe in anymore.

“I can’t hear,” he said.

You knelt across from him.

His voice cracked open at the edges. Not from physical pain—but something deeper. Shame. Rage. Grief. It poured out of him in thick, clumsy pieces.

“I can’t see, and now I can’t hear, and I can’t feel the world the way I used to. I—I’m losing my body. Everything it knows. Everything it used to be.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. His breathing was uneven, strained, like he was keeping himself from yelling.

“I was supposed to be used to pain. That was the deal. Right? That’s what suffering’s for. But this—this silence…”

His hands trembled.

He wasn’t just speaking.

He was praying.

But not to God.

To you.

And you felt it in your chest like someone had rung a bell inside your ribs.

Still, you didn’t move to comfort him. Not yet.

Because the grief wasn’t finished speaking.

He lifted his face just enough to tilt his head toward you—though his eyes didn’t find yours. He could only feel your presence.

“I tried to go back. To the church. To the Father. But the walls felt too small. The crucifix too heavy.”

He laughed once—short, bitter.

“God isn’t listening.”

You looked at him carefully. The way his fingers curled against the tile. The way his shoulders hunched forward like the weight of everything he carried had finally brought him to ground. You waited, still kneeling before him, as the storm outside deepened.

The man let the silence linger. Not because it soothed him—but because it didn’t. Because it screamed. A pressure behind his eyes, a ringing that came in sharp pulses, almost like punishment. His jaw clenched again. Then he let out a breath that shook more than it should’ve.

“I gave Him everything,” he said finally, voice low and rasping. “Every bruise. Every drop of blood. I bled for His justice. I bled to keep people safe.” His lip curled with something caught between a grimace and a snarl. “And for what? So I could bury the only woman I ever loved twice?”

You said nothing. Despite your confusion, despite the feeling of wanting to comfort him. This was a man who needed something more than comfort.

“I died in that building,” he whispered, eyes fixed on the floor. “Or I should have. It would’ve made sense. But He didn’t take me. He let me live.” He pressed his fist to his chest like he was trying to claw something out from beneath the skin. “Now I’m deaf. I can’t fight. I can’t even feel the city. The thing that always told me where to go—what to do—it’s gone. All of it. Gone.”

The shadows around the room had thickened with his words, pulled inward like breath held too long.

“I’ve served a God who punishes people like you,” he said suddenly, his head tilting toward you, though his gaze never found yours. “That’s the truth, isn’t it?”

You stayed still. Unmoving. But your eyes didn’t leave him.

“I grew up learning your kind was a lie at best. Evil at worst. And now…” His voice cracked. “Now you’re the only one who hears me.”

The candlelight shuddered.

He let out a bitter, humorless breath—almost a laugh.

“I don’t believe anymore,” he said. “Not in Him. Not in anything.”

Then he lowered his head again—forehead to the floor, like prayer turned to surrender.

You watched him closely. The wreckage of a man who had carried too much faith for too long—and now had nowhere to put it. He wasn’t just broken. He was hollow. Grief had emptied him. Silence had sealed it.

It wasn’t your place to repair that. But you could offer something else.

A beginning.

You didn’t speak right away.

Instead, you stood—quiet, deliberate—and turned toward the altar.

The storm still rattled the windowpanes, but your movements were steady. Familiar. You reached for the brass dish and carried it to the center of the room, placing it within the circle etched faintly into the floor. Dried bay leaves crackled in your palm as you crushed them into the dish—fragrant, sharp, potent. With a tilt of a candle’s flame, they caught fire. Smoke curled upward in soft, spiraling threads, turning the air thick with scent and intention.

Behind you, Matt shifted.

You didn’t look at him. Not yet.

You moved to the shelves and retrieved a flat obsidian disc, still cold from sitting for so long. Its weight anchored you. You returned to the circle and knelt just beyond Matt’s bowed frame, placing the obsidian at the center of the ring between you.

His breathing hitched faintly. You could feel the tension wound through his spine like a cord pulled tight.

“I’m not going to fix you,” you said, your voice quiet but firm.

He didn’t respond, but the way his head tilted—barely—told you he was listening with everything he had left.

“This isn’t a miracle. I’m not here to make you whole again. Only to clear the path. To start the fire.” Your voice softened. “You have to choose whether or not you walk through it.”

You pressed your palm to the floor just outside the circle’s edge.

The sigils you had drawn years ago carved from the wooden floor burst into view, flickering to life like embered veins—gold, red, and a deep, pulsing orange. They didn’t just glow. They breathed, matching Matt’s ragged exhale. The bay leaf smoke twisted in new patterns, drawn inward by the shift in energy.

Matt flinched as if he could see the light reach his knees.

“What is this?” he asked, his voice low and dry.

“Not a trap,” you said. “And not for worship. It’s a call.”

“To what?”

Your eyes remained on the smoke. “To the ones who loved you before you ever knew how to love yourself.”

The air stilled, the way it does before something ancient answers.

And then the shift came.

Not with noise—but with presence.

The smoke thickened. The glow of the sigils dimmed in places, then burned brighter—like a figure moving between flame and shadow.

You didn’t see him with your eyes.

You felt him.

Broad shoulders. Familiar weight. A presence shaped by discipline and love. He stood just beyond the circle, not looming—but watching. Rooted like an old tree, protective even in silence.

You didn’t know his name. But you didn’t need to.

The man before you did.

Because something in him broke—so quietly it might’ve gone unnoticed, if you hadn’t been kneeling this close. His breath caught, and a sound barely passed his lips. Not a word. Not a sob. Just the sound of recognition.

He didn’t move.

But the weight of grief, of love unspoken, folded over his back like a second spine.

You stayed still, letting the energy settle.

Then, gently, you placed your hand flat on the floor again—just outside the glowing sigils.

“I can’t restore what you’ve buried,” you murmured. “But I can show you where to start digging.”

The obsidian warmed in the circle’s center. The smoke slowed, curling now in reverent arcs. The lines of light flickered once, twice—and then dimmed, leaving a low pulse beneath your skin, like a heart remembering how to beat.

The man remained on his knees, breathing deep and slow, his fists unclenched for the first time since he returned.

He didn’t speak.

But the ringing in his head—the brutal, sharp scream that had haunted every quiet moment—dulled. Not gone. But quieter.

He shifted just slightly, as if the weight he carried had eased, even if only for a breath.

You rose slowly, keeping your hands to yourself.

This wasn’t the kind of healing that came from touch.

It came from presence. From being seen.

From remembering you weren’t the only one who had loved and been lost.

Outside, the storm softened to a steady whisper. Inside, the silence no longer felt empty.

It felt waiting.

You extinguished the bay leaf flame, the smoke thinning into the air like a closing sigh. The sigils faded slowly, returning to oil-dark marks on the floor. The obsidian remained warm between you.

You let him stay there—on his knees, in the echo of something sacred.

Because the ritual wasn’t meant to save him.

Only to remind him he was worth saving.

[witchofhellskitchen]

🕯️When Light Fades // Daredevil x Witch!Reader 🕯️

a Daredevil (Matt Murdock) x Witch!Reader slow-burn

There’s a wound in Hell’s Kitchen—and something old is starting to bleed through it.

After a near-fatal encounter, a broken man in red stumbles into your apothecary, half-dead and completely silent. You don't ask his name. He doesn't ask what you are. But there is power in the unspoken, and the longer he lingers in your doorway, the more the city begins to change.

As sigils bloom across alley walls and a dark presence stirs beneath the streets, you begin to suspect the man's suffering is more than personal—it’s cosmic. Something is unraveling the spiritual fabric of the city. And it’s starting with him.

You are a witch of old blood. He is a man at war with his god. Together, you may be the only thing standing between Hell’s Kitchen and a rising hunger that was never meant to return.

Takes place during Daredevil Season 3 (Netflix) – diverges canon mid-season Warnings: Spiritual themes, religious deconstruction, violence, trauma recovery, grief, occasional ritual imagery, use of she/her pronouns for reader

TLDR story involves themes of reader practicing paganistic witchcraft but still dabbles in fantasy, marvel like style magic as well. all rituals or practices mentioned are based with real research as the author herself is a pagan witch :)

Chapters:

[What the City Dragged In]

[What Remains in Silence]

[Unseen Ties]

[TBD]

[TBD]

[TBD]

[TBD]

[TBD]

[TBD]

[TBD]

[TBD]

[TBD]

[TBD]

[TBD]

[TBD]

[witchofhellskitchen]

Pt. 1- What the City Dragged In // When Light Fades, Daredevil x Witch!Reader

a/n welcome to the first chapter in my slow burn fic for matt murdock x witch!reader. im so excited to share this with you guys as my first fic posted to this account. i cross post all of the things i write to my ao3 so you can find my older works there as well.

there aren't many warnings for this chapter other than general witchy symbolism. please enjoy! this chapter is a lot of background and establishing the scene of the fic, i promise it gets meatier soon after this.

word count: 2463

series masterlist

The apothecary always breathed easiest after sundown.

The last customer was long gone—an old woman with stiff hands and a voice like dry paper, looking for something to soothe her joints. You gave her a jar of infused comfrey balm and a charm stitched with mugwort and red thread. As she left, you sealed the door with a whispered word and the snap of a salt ring between your fingers.

Now, the shop was quiet. Sacred. Safe.

By then, the day’s noise faded into distant traffic, and the city softened just enough to let you feel it again—its heartbeat, low and tired beneath the concrete. The candles burned slower in the quiet. Glass jars lined the wooden shelves, catching the last shimmer of light—some filled with dried flowers, others with herbs and minerals whose names you knew better in dreams than in textbooks.

You moved through the space barefoot, the hem of your linen dress brushing against the tile floor. Every step had intention. Every motion was a ritual. You weren’t casting spells in the theatrical sense—no lightning, no Latin, no blood—but everything here meant something.

Magic didn’t always need ceremony.

Sometimes it just needed stillness

You straightened the charm bundles hanging near the door. You tapped the old bronze bell above your altar three times—sharp, high notes to wake the space. You held your palm above a clear quartz cluster resting in a shallow clay bowl, then reached for an incense of myrrh and cleared the corners of your shop with its heavy, bitter smoke.

“Clear what clings,” you murmured, sweeping the incense again in slow arcs through the air. “Leave only what serves.”

This was your work. Your inheritance. Your sanctuary. And tonight, something felt... off.

The wind had picked up an hour earlier. Not unusual for autumn, but there was a tension to it—like something circling above the buildings, unseen. You watched the front window as tree limbs bent under the pressure, and rain began to patter against the glass in irregular, searching rhythms.

You lit three beeswax candles at the back altar: one for protection, one for healing, one for sight.

Then you sat.

Cross-legged on the floor, hands resting on your knees, you focused your breath and reached. Not far—just beneath the skin of things. Into the city itself.

It was harder to feel these days. The pulse that used to be steady and warm under your ribs had grown faint. Clouded. Like someone had taken a blanket of light and pulled it tight around something broken.

You didn’t have a name for it yet, this hollowing of the city’s energy. You only knew it was spreading.

Your eyes drifted toward the silver bowl of still water on your altar. Normally it reflected only what you gave it—intentions, symbols, brief flashes of potential. But tonight it shimmered on its own.

You leaned closer. The surface quivered. Not from movement, but from something beneath it.

“Something’s coming,” you whispered. “Or something’s waking.”

The bell above the door snapped—high and sharp, like a sudden scream.

You stood before the sound finished ringing, hand instinctively raised, body tense but calm. You didn’t feel danger, exactly. But you felt something close.

The man who stumbled in barely looked human at first glance. Just black cloth, soaked and sagging with rain. Blood at his temple. A limp in one leg. His hands trembled, and his head hung like it was too heavy to lift.

He crossed the threshold and your wards reacted. You felt it—a flare of heat in the back of your neck, a pulse through your many talismans. The carved sigil in the doorframe lit up faintly—then flickered.

Not rejection. Not welcome. Just… confusion.

Then the man collapsed.

You were there before his head hit the tile, catching his shoulders as he folded. He groaned faintly—just breath and muscle memory—and tried to speak. His lips parted.

“Don’t… call anyone,” he rasped. “Please.”

And then his body went slack.

He was heavier than he looked, all lean strength beneath soaked layers. You half-carried, half-dragged him behind the beaded curtain to the back room—a place meant for privacy, for spellwork, for healing. Not for strangers. Not for men dropped half-dead onto your doorstep.

But something in your bones wouldn’t let you leave him there. Something told you he belonged here. If only for tonight.

You lit more candles. Swung the bell once more. Doused the room in smoke.

Then you got to work.

His jacket peeled away easily, revealing a black compression shirt torn at the side and soaked through with blood. His face was battered—brow split, lip busted, cheekbone swelling. You’d seen fights before. This wasn’t just an alley brawl.

This was a warpath.

You cleaned his wounds gently. Applied a salve of comfrey, calendula, and goldenrod to the worst of them, pressing your palm against the bruises until the inflammation eased under your hand. You whispered soft chants—ritual words passed down through your bloodline like old lullabies. Your quartz glowed faintly as it hovered beside the cot, amplifying your intention.

And then you felt it.

Not the pain in his flesh. The pain beneath it.

The absence.

There was a hole in this man. A place where something sacred used to live—faith, maybe. Or hope. Or love. Now it was burned out. Charred. Hollow.

And in its place? A terrible silence. Not peaceful. Not dead. But raw. Like a prayer left unanswered for too long.

Your breath caught.

“Who are you?” you whispered.

The candles flickered violently. The bell on your altar rang once, without being touched.

Outside, the rain fell harder. And somewhere beneath the city—deep, deep beneath—the ancient thing you had felt stirring began to listen.

You stayed with him longer than you meant to.

Long after the bleeding slowed, after the worst of the bruising cooled beneath your fingers, you lingered beside the cot—watching the rise and fall of his chest, the small flickers of pain that crossed his brow even in sleep. There was something old in him. Not by age, but by weight. You felt it in his bones, the way one might feel a stone resting on sacred ground.

His body was healing. Slowly. But his soul… That was another story.

You stood, finally, and moved back toward the altar.

The incense had burned down to its last tendrils of smoke, curling through the air like restless fingers. You took the silver bell again and rang it once, soft and clear—a signal to the unseen, a gesture of respect. Then you knelt.

The altar wasn’t large, just a raised slab of stone wrapped in embroidered cloth, but it had held generations. On it rested a framed photograph of your great-grandmother, her eyes sharp and knowing even in black and white. Around her were the tokens of your bloodline: bones of river birds, sprigs of rosemary wrapped in thread, a small clay jar filled with ash from the hearth of your childhood home.

This was your connection.

Your magic was not meant for spectacle. It was meant to guide the living, and speak for the dead. You had always walked close to the veil—ever since you were old enough to know that not every whisper in the dark was imagined.

Some people feared the dead. You listened to them.

You lit another candle—this one dark blue, for remembrance—and placed it at the altar’s edge.

“Guide me,” you said softly, eyes on the flame. “If there’s something I’m meant to see… let me see it.”

The flame flickered in response. Not much, but enough.

You didn’t always get answers. Ancestors weren’t messengers on command. But they nudged. They stirred the air when something needed your attention. They pushed dreams through the cracks in your sleep.

And lately? They had been loud.

You reached for your quartz pendulum, letting it swing above the altar, your breath slow and steady. The crystal turned clockwise. Strong. Yes.

He was connected. The man sleeping behind your curtain—he wasn’t just another stray.

Something in your lineage recognized him. Not as kin. But as a variable. A knot in the thread.

You rose again, the pendant still warm in your hand, and moved back toward the cot. He hadn’t stirred. His face, though bruised and bloodied, had softened in sleep. But the void within him… it pulsed like a second heartbeat.

He’s not empty, you realized, slowly. He’s grieving.

Not just for someone lost—but for himself. For the part of him that once held light and had since been buried under guilt and ruin. You knew that kind of loss. That kind of silence. Magic had taught you early: sometimes the dead were easier to speak to than the living.

You sat beside him again and reached for the bell—not to wake him, but to clear the air.

Three slow chimes.

Then you whispered, to no one in particular, “If he stays, you’ll show me why… won’t you?”

No answer. Only the low thunder outside. And the sound of the city exhaling—long, tired, and uneasy.

You stayed by his side as the night deepened, your tea long forgotten, your ritual work suspended in the quiet that followed. Sometimes you watched the stranger sleep. Other times, you simply listened.

The wind outside had picked up again, whistling against the doorframe, but inside, the candles burned slow and steady. Steady enough to remind you that the veil was thin tonight. Your work had opened the space—and something had answered.

You turned toward the altar again, drawn back by instinct rather than thought.

The old photograph of your grandmother caught the candlelight in its glass. Her face looked sterner tonight—lined by age, but more by will. You could almost hear her voice in your head:

“Keep the circle. Keep the rhythm. Even the dead need structure.”

She had raised you in a house that always smelled like rosemary and rain. You barely remembered your parents—just soft impressions, the kind that didn’t hold faces. They had passed on the day you were born, claimed by some accident too tragic for the town to repeat without a hush. Your grandmother never called it fate. She called it exchange.

“Magic always costs,” she used to say. “And you were born glowing.”

She had poured her life into preparing you. Teaching you the old rites. Showing you how to trace sigils in oil and how to name the stars properly, by both sky and shadow. You’d learned to talk to the wind and listen to silence. She taught you to grieve early, and thoroughly.

By the time you were ten, you knew how to prepare a body for burial—magically, spiritually, gently.

“There are worse things than death,” she had whispered, once. “Like dying without being remembered.”

She was never soft, your grandmother. But she was steady. Reliable in the way old trees are—rooted deep, weather-worn, and impossible to shake. She stirred soup with the same rhythm she used to grind herbs, always clockwise. She tied your shoes the way she braided warding charms—tight, and with a kind of protective intent you wouldn’t understand until years later.

She didn’t tell you bedtime stories. She told you what the stars meant on nights they didn’t sit where they were supposed to. She taught you that words had weight. That names mattered. That the dead didn’t haunt the living—at least, not without reason.

You learned magic the same way other kids learned to ride bikes or do math—slowly, and without realizing how unusual it was.

You didn’t have playdates. Other kids avoided you, called your house weird. Said it smelled like dirt and candles and dead things. You never argued. They weren’t entirely wrong.

Your grandmother never softened the truth. She believed children should understand grief before it caught them off guard. You learned early that some spirits lingered, not out of malice, but because they were forgotten. She taught you how to help them pass—how to listen when no one else would.

She’d say, “It’s not about talking to the dead. It’s about knowing when they’re already speaking.”

The house you grew up in always felt full. Not in a crowded way—but in a watched way. Not dangerous. Just… aware. You were never really alone, even when you wanted to be. Especially after she passed

You’d built this apothecary after she passed, using the coins she left wrapped in green string beneath your floorboard. Her name was carved into the foundation—alongside your parents’.

And now?

Now you guided others.

Through healing. Through grief. Through magic that remembered how to carry both.

Your gaze drifted back to the man on the cot. The stranger.

He hadn’t moved. But something in the air had.

A current, soft and cold, swept across the floor. The flame on your blue candle bent sideways—then corrected itself.

You rose, carefully. Reached for your obsidian disk from the altar and set it down near his side. A scrying tool. Not to peer into his fate—you weren’t that intrusive. Just to measure the weight of the moment. To track the shadows.

You closed your eyes and reached out.

Not with hands.

With your knowing.

And for the first time in hours, you saw something:

A rooftop. A woman in red. A man falling—not from a height, but inward. Like someone losing not just his footing, but his meaning.

You gasped softly, pulling away.

The image vanished like smoke in a breeze.

Your pulse steadied after a moment, but your thoughts didn’t. You reached into your satchel and pulled out a charm you hadn’t touched in years: a thin red ribbon braided with black thread and a single silver ring. It had belonged to your grandmother once.

She wore it after your parents died.

You’d only worn it once before—when the veil felt thin enough to cut your skin. You held it now and felt the memory of grief hum against your fingers like a string pulled too tight.

“He’s not the only one carrying loss,” you murmured aloud.

Maybe that’s why he ended up here. Maybe that’s why your wards hesitated.

Grief recognizes grief. And magic always moves through mirrors.

Outside, thunder rolled low and steady. The city rumbled beneath it—alive and aching. You swore, just for a second, you felt something… watching. Not through the windows.

Beneath.

Whatever had been banished from this city—whatever old wound you’d spent years tending with salt and charm and care—it had felt him too. And now it waited.

You moved back toward the cot, setting the red charm beside his hand.

“Rest,” you whispered. “While you can.”

Then you returned to your altar. You sat. You lit a final candle—white for protection—and drew your knees up beneath your chin.

You would not sleep tonight. The city had stopped breathing.

And so had he.