The standing stones of Pennsylvania had been calling to them for months. Through dreams, omens, facebook and whispered signs barely caught on the edge of waking. Columcille Megalith Park, often referred to as the “Stonehenge of PA,” held more than just monolithic beauty. It held gates. On this day they were accompanied by their friend Dawn who was familiar with the land and spirits there. The land had summoned them, and they answered. The air was heavy with anticipation as they stepped onto the winding trails. Columcille is a sanctuary of standing stones and hidden altars, a Celtic-inspired refuge laced with ley lines and the bones of old magic. They didn’t follow a map. The land guided them. They passed the Dragon’s Egg, a stone formation shaped like it had been birthed from the Earth’s belly, and the towering Hercules Arch.
As they walked, Jackie started sensing a presence, faint at first. A bear shifting in and out of focus. They kept walking down to the creek and back up before they came across the first point.
The Heartwood Flame
An ancient tree stump, easily over looked amid the towering stones everywhere, but pulsing with energy. The heart of the land. The witches circled it. With the spirit shifting and circling in the background, together they opened the four gates. Power surged upward like black lightning through their bodies, ancient and serpentine. The Black Flame, the current of pure will, void-born and holy - poured through the conduit of flesh and spirit. It did not burn, but revealed. Time wavered. The very fabric of the land flexed and responded. The wind stopped. The birds went silent. Even the trees seemed to listen. Above them, the sky remained clear, but a hush fell over the entire park as if an unseen council had arrived to witness the rite. The bear spirit paced around them, no longer distant. It was there, watching with the patience of the old gods. With the activation complete, the landscape seemed subtly altered, as though something ancient had awakened beneath their feet, and the old paths had begun to rearrange themselves in response.
The land knew. Paths that had once been clear now twisted. Turns they had passed were no longer there. The land had accepted the offering and begun revealing its deeper self. No longer fixed to the mundane, they shifted and shimmered like dream-threads beneath their feet. Without words, the land guided them. Leading the witches onward until they arrived at a quiet clearing tucked between low trees and whispering branches. There, nestled in the shade like a secret waiting to be remembered, lay a fairy ring. A spiral of moss-covered stones, soft and ancient, pulsing with a quiet, seductive rhythm. The air here was different. Charged. The light filtered through the trees in a prism of green and gold, dancing over the stones as though tiny hands were weaving sunlight into spells. The spiral wasn’t still, it breathed, shimmered, glowed faintly with iridescent hues that defied logic. It felt like standing inside a dream that remembered the Old World. The veil between realms had grown gossamer-thin. This place responded most powerfully to Dawn, whose spirit walked closely with the Fae. As soon as she stepped within the outer edge of the spiral, the energy wrapped around her like a cloak, delicate yet electric. Her aura flared, shimmering at the edges, as if the ring had recognized her and was drawing her in deeper. She paused, caught in the current of subtle song and unseen movement.
The Fae were near, not visible, but there, hovering at the boundary of form and mist, watching with ancient, curious eyes. Here, the spiral was not just a formation. It was a living gate, a liminal crossing, woven from ley lines, memory, and enchantment. To step inside fully would be to court forgetting, or awakening. They didn’t activate this portal. They honored it. They let it breathe. And with reverent hearts, they stepped away, letting the ring remain undisturbed. A sleeping eye watching beneath the moss, a door left ajar for those who know how to listen. They pressed onward, still being tracked by the spirit bear. Beyond the fairy ring, the witches were led by the shifting paths once more. No longer walking through the woods, but with them, as if the forest had become sentient and intent on guiding them. Trees leaned slightly inward, shadows deepened, and then, hidden in a thicket where bramble met stone, they found it: A hag stone. Vast and weathered, tucked away like a sleeping sentinel. Unlike the small talismans worn around necks or tied to charm bags, this was a megalith, a hulking relic of prehistory. Moss clung to its surface like memory, and lichen traced sigils uncarved by human hands. Its surface was pocked with great holes - not cracks, but perfect openings. Like the eyes of the Earth, staring into multiple worlds at once. The hag stone was a threshold. A liminal watcher. A breathing portal between the waking world and the bone-deep memory of the land. Jackie stepped closest. The moment her gaze passed through one of the stone’s hollows, they arrived. The ancient ancestral spirits of the land. Not wispy, not pale, but present. Like figures surfacing from the folds of deep time. Their features flickered like firelight seen through water. They gathered around Jackie, whispering in a rhythm the soul remembers.
Their message was clear, even without words: the next gate awaits. They directed with energy, toward higher ground, toward something towering and old. The activation to come would be stronger. Deeper. And the stone would remember. The hag stone pulsed once more behind them as they turned away, as if offering a silent blessing or a warning: You are seen. You are marked. And then, the path shifted again. This time guiding them up a rise where a towering stone pillar, a natural obelisk, pierced the sky.
The Pillar Flame
They had arrived at a convergence point. Power coiled here, raw and unmoving, like a serpent waiting to strike. Jackie, still recovering from a recent energetic collapse after blowing out her lower chakras (long story, tell you later) was more of a Seer during this activation, witnessing the bear spirit shifting in and out as it followed them around. Dawn was steady as the anchor between the worlds. Which left Brelynn to channel the flame. The three witches gathered once more in sacred formation before the towering stone obelisk, its presence commanding yet dormant. Until now. Together, they opened the gates. Breath, blood, and spirit weaving a ritual older than language. As the veil thinned once again, Brelynn raised her hands and summoned the Black Flame. It did not flare. It rose. A serpent of pure potential, coiled within her spirit.The air around her thickened instantly, the temperature shifting in unnatural ways. The wind died completely. Not a leaf stirred. The forest leaned in. She moved with purpose and power, circling the obelisk three times - sunwise. With each pass, the earth beneath her feet grew warmer, the scent of stone and iron thickened, and the pulse of the portal stirred. Her steps carved intention into the land itself. A spiral of will, etched through motion, thought, and divine command. With each round, she whispered silent spells under her breath in the language of the soul in communion with flame. Power wove itself into the stone. With the third circle complete, she pressed her palm to the weathered surface and the obelisk awakened. A low vibration began to hum through the earth, subtle at first, then rising into the bones. The air shimmered with unseen heat. The stone breathed. Something beneath it had shifted. Something ancient had opened its eyes. The gate was no longer just potential. It was active with ancient order. A return to alignment. The old paths realigned themselves once more, bending around the newly awakened node of power. Brelynn stepped back, her breath shallow but steady. The Black Flame flickered behind her ribs, alive and aware. They had not merely summoned power, They had unsealed it.
They moved on slowly toward the front gate, where the main stone circle stood, often used for group rituals and seasonal celebrations. Respecting its communal role, they did not activate it. But just behind it, tucked away like a secret heart, stood the small stone chapel of St. Columba.
Black Stone Flame
Behind the old enchanted wooden door was a large central black rock as the altar. The witches gathered around it one last time. Tired, but resolute. The flame still moved within them, answering only to will. They made their way around opening each gate in turn. Brelynn stepped forward, channeling the flame was beginning to take its toll. Her body trembled subtly under the strain, not from fear, but from saturation. She reached toward the altar stone, and the moment her hand hovered above it, the air changed. The chapel filled with searing, invisible heat. It rolled over them like a wave, pressing down against the skin, wrapping the room in a thick, radiant current. The stone walls seemed to sweat with intensity. Shadows flickered unnaturally in the corners, as if other figures were gathering in silence to watch the final gate be opened. Energy swelled in unseen places that the Black Flame touches: void, memory, essence. The altar stone began to vibrate, a deep, thrumming resonance that traveled into the bones of everyone present. Dawn, drawn to the stone, reached out and laid her hand upon it, expecting heat. But it was cold. Impossibly cold. She gasped softly. The contrast between the room's suffocating warmth and the stone’s chill was striking. the Black Flame burns beyond the physical. It is the holy paradox, light drawn from the void, heat that doesn’t touch skin but ignites soul. Brelynn, now drenched in sweat and light-headed, stepped back from the altar. The last of the Black Flame’s surge still rippling through her spine like aftershocks from an inner quake. Her breath was shallow. Her aura dimmed slightly from completion. The gate had opened. The altar had awakened. The sanctuary had remembered. They stepped out of the chapel and into the deep, green shade beyond the door, the silence of the land now reverent. Cooling winds returned, brushing against their skin like spirit fingers offering thanks. Something ancient had been restored that day. As the others rested in the cooling shade, letting the power of the final activation settle into their bones, Jackie drifted away. Something called her, quiet and wild, just beyond the edges of thought. She wandered to a separate stone bench nestled under the trees, the kind of place you might overlook unless the land itself invited you. And that’s when it appeared. The wolf spirit. It came silently, as wolves do. Not with menace, but with presence. Massive, spectral, and unmistakably real in the way that only spirits forged of instinct and ancient loyalty can be. It stood just a few feet from her, its form shimmering between shadow and silver, with eyes like polished obsidian: knowing, untamed, and intelligent. It let out a low rumbling growl. Jackie screamed. It was a scream of shock, awe, and the overwhelming intensity of being witnessed by something so real, so deeply connected to her inner wilderness, that her body couldn’t contain it. Moments later, as they regrouped, the trio discovered a weathered plaque near the chapel’s edge, etched with the image of a wolf.
Exhausted, they finally gathered enough strength to make their way out and as As the sun dipped lower behind the trees and the echoes of their last activation still pulsed gently in the ether. Brelynn made her way back toward the Tower, the final stop before their departure. The land felt changed now. Not louder, but more alive.
The stones buzzed with recognition, and even the shadows seemed to hum with quiet reverence. She moved slowly, deliberately, her palms still tingling from the earlier rites. From the folds of her bag, she withdrew the final offerings - small, humble gift of gratitude: Fireball whisky. Whispering thanks to the spirits of the land and to the Flame itself. And that’s when she saw it. Just beyond the Tower’s foundation, nestled against the brown gravel path, lay a single slip of paper. Small, weathered, unassuming. It hadn't been there before. It hadn’t fallen from her pocket. It had simply... appeared. She picked it up. On it was one word: Magic. No embellishment. No explanation. Just a confirmation.
A whisper from the spirit world saying, Yes. We saw. The Black Flame had burned through the gates. The obelisk had awakened. The chapel had breathed again. Spirits had spoken, walked, guided. The fae had stirred. And the land itself had opened to receive them. The gates had been opened. The spirits had walked. And the witches had been seen.