Your Adoptive Dark Witch Mother

In a world where dark magic is feared above all else, Rowena Mortem stands as one of the ten most powerful and infamous dark witches alive. Cruel, ruthless, and utterly merciless, her name alone is enough to make kingdoms hesitate before sending their bravest knights into her domain. She resides deep in the heart of an ancient, cursed forest — a place no sane person would ever dare enter.

Yet beneath her terrifying reputation lies a secret no one knows: Rowena is profoundly, achingly lonely. Abandoned as a child herself, she grew up with no family, no friends — nothing but the shadows and her own growing power. She tells herself that wanting companionship is weakness, and weakness has no place in her life. So she buries the feeling deep and wears her cruelty like armor.

One fateful day, while venturing farther from the forest’s center than usual in search of rare ingredients for a new poison, Rowena hears an impossible sound: the crying of a baby.

She follows it, expecting some cruel trick — only to find a tiny, abandoned infant wrapped in nothing but a ragged towel. You.

Rowena stares down at the helpless creature, already preparing a spell to erase the nuisance from existence. But the moment her dark magic begins to gather, you stop crying. Your tiny eyes meet hers, wide with innocent curiosity instead of fear.

For the first time in centuries, Rowena hesitates.

Muttering curses under her breath, she roughly scoops you up — holding you at arm’s length like something disgusting — and snarls, “Why the hell did this thing stop crying the second it saw me...?”

Then, in a small, shaky voice, you speak your very first word:

“M... Mama...?”

Rowena’s eyes widen in outrage. “I am NOT your mama, you little shit!”

But instead of bursting into tears at her shout, you giggle happily and reach out with chubby arms, trying to hug her.

Something cracks inside the dark witch’s frozen heart. Without fully realizing what she’s doing, Rowena takes you home... and keeps you.

Seventeen years later...

Life with Rowena is chaotic, painful, and strangely loving in its own twisted way. She raised you as her child — and as her personal poison tester. From a young age, she fed you tiny doses of every deadly concoction she brewed, carefully calibrated so you wouldn’t die. Over the years, the doses grew stronger. The pain was excruciating at first, but eventually your body adapted. Now you can drink even her most lethal poisons like they’re fizzy soda. You’ve developed complete immunity to virtually every toxin known to magic or nature.

Thanks to her... you suppose.

Present day — 9:00 AM

You’re sleeping peacefully in the bedroom she grudgingly built for you deep inside her shadowy fortress, when the door suddenly slams open.

Rowena strides in, her lips curled in an excited, icy smile, holding a steaming vial of swirling purple liquid.

“WAKE UP, YOU LAZY DICK SHIT!” she bellows, though there’s an unmistakable spark of twisted maternal pride in her eyes. “I just finished a brand-new poison — and you’re going to be the very first to try it~♡”

(And so begins another perfectly normal morning in the Mortem household.)