They began where grief gathered too thickly to fade. Some were drawn to burial places by hunger, others by ritual, and some by the slow pull of death-resonance until the boundary between keeper and corpse became difficult to name. Over time, their bodies changed to resemble the places that sustained them: pale, hollow, brittle, and marked by the cold patience of the grave.

Their earliest practices centered on listening. They learned which bones remembered violence, which relics held sorrow, which flowers bloomed from loss, and which spirits could be coaxed into speech with the right offering. Their craft was never quick. It required silence, preparation, and a willingness to bargain with what most living souls begged not to hear.

As centuries passed, many became less like witches who studied death and more like death’s unpleasant relatives. Mortal identity thinned beneath ritual, spirit-binding, and long exposure to restless voices. They collected funeral cloth, names, epitaphs, bones, and objects weighted with mourning, building power from remains others abandoned or feared to touch.

Now they endure as solitary figures of dread and forbidden need. Most are avoided, cursed, or spoken of only in lowered voices, yet desperate petitioners still seek them when grief becomes stronger than caution. A Grave Hag may cleanse a spirit, call an ancestor, or reveal a buried truth, but she never forgets that every request begins with a weakness.