Gurgle…
gurgle…
In the suffocating dark, Will found himself suspended naked inside a glass vat.
His limbs were those of a scrawny child, his skin webbed with dense, pulsing black veins.
A scorching heat bloomed behind his breastbone, the temperature rising until it felt like a smelting furnace had been shoved down his throat, cooking his entrails from the inside out.
Pain radiated along the blackened fissures in his flesh, dull and throbbing.
Blind panic seized him, driving his hands to batter frantically against the slick glass pane.
Then a sudden, cruel realization struck him: men could not breathe underwater.
As seconds scraped by, Will’s eyelids grew heavy.
His flailing limbs lost their strength, drifting limp against the current.
Just before darkness swallowed his vision whole, a figure approached through the rippling fluid.
A white-haired man in ornate scholar’s robes, peering through round spectacles.
…
Pale daylight filtered through twin panes of glass set into the loft roof, illuminating a dozen planters below.
The herbs inside twisted in unnatural forms, their leaves spliced and grafted together, occasionally flickering with faint emerald veins that signaled a successful cultivation.
Will shot up from the pallet, gasping for air.
Damp sweat soaked through his linen pillow, plastering his undershirt cold against his spine.
His jaw remained locked tight, the residue of the nightmare clinging to his thoughts like oil on water.
Over the past few days, as his mastery over Life Drain sharpened, the seal over his early memories had begun to crack.
Every time he drifted to sleep, the same scene played out.
At first it had been nothing more than hazy silhouettes, but this morning, the phantom burn against his scalp had felt horrifyingly real.
He was beginning to realize what this body had endured.
Someone had bound him to an operating table from early childhood.
Judging by the blackened cracks spreading under his skin, that bastard had likely pumped him full of experimental witcher concoctions.
Those dark fissures were identical to the toxic vascular ruptures suffered by witchers who swallowed heavy decoctions.
The sheer agony of the trials had driven his child mind to shut down, burying the memories in a coma.
In the eyes of his captor, the boy had simply been a failed batch, discarded into the gutter like refuse.
Without Melitele’s intervention, this vessel would have rotted a decade ago.
The white-haired figure bore an uncanny resemblance to Professor Moreau, the obsessed scholar who sought to reverse his son’s witcher mutations only to stumble into secondary mutagens.
Will leaned against the timber frame, staring at his palms.
Moreau might already be dead, buried somewhere beneath Toussaint.
Even if the old lunatic still drew breath, facing an accomplished mage was no casual stroll through the woods.
No matter.
When the time comes, I’ll ride out with Geralt and see what lies in those ruins.
A cold resolve settled in his chest.
If that wretch still lived, Will would put steel through his throat himself.
For now, he needed answers from Nenneke.
…
“What? I appeared naked right in front of the altar?”
Will’s voice cracked across the stone vaults of the prayer hall.
Nenneke shot him a sharp look, tapping her fingers against her sleeve to tell him to lower his tone before pointing him toward a bench.
“We were gathered for the midday prayer when you simply manifested before the icon. Every sister in the hall took it for a sign from the goddess, so we took you in.”
She smoothed her skirts, a wry edge to her voice.
“The senior priestesses took turns looking after you, washing your linens, bathing your skin, wiping your backside. You did nothing but sleep, taking neither bread nor water for ten straight years.”
Will sat frozen, feeling as though lightning had struck him square between the ears.
No wonder the matrons always greeted him with such doting smiles; they had been changing his swaddling clothes since he was small.
It had nothing to do with personal charm.
They simply looked at him the way mothers looked at their own boy.
Noticing the faint pallor in his cheeks, Nenneke rested a firm, calloused hand on his shoulder.
“What brought this on? Did you remember something from before?”
Will hesitated for a moment, then recounted the broken fragments of the vat and the man with the round spectacles.
Nenneke’s face hardened, her brow furrowing into deep crevices.
“That damned rogue… he must have burned your magical conduit to cinders during the trial. It was the goddess who preserved your spark. I swear to you, Will, when you landed on our stones, your skin was as smooth as river glass. Not a single blemish.”
She tapped her chin, considering the rest.
“Still, if this touches on witcher craft, I might put the question to Geralt next time he comes through.”
“Geralt of Rivia?” Will asked, keeping his tone carefully casual.
“The very same. I’ve patched that white-haired fool together more times than I care to count. His mentor, Vesemir, has walked the Continent for centuries. If anyone knows what those butchers put into their flasks, it would be him.”
Nenneke bustled off down the hall, already planning her correspondence.
Will watched her leave, piecing the clues together.
Given the memories, his original self must have possessed a natural magic source from birth; otherwise, an alchemist of that caliber would never have wasted precious reagents on him.
As for his birth parents, they had likely met a grim end.
Men like that bought peasant orphans for a handful of coppers or snatched them off the road.
He shook the thought away.
He had no memories of them anyway.
What mattered now was raw numbers.
By midday, Will had saddled his mount and ridden toward Mel Farm.
The acreage belonged to the sanctuary, worked by aging tenants without kin to support them.
Melitele granted them the plots free of rent, taking only forty percent of the harvest when autumn came.
No lord in the North offered lighter terms; even Duke Hereward’s bailiffs took more.
Neat rows of low wattle-and-daub cottages lined the edge of the fields, their thatched roofs patched with dry reeds.
Among the workers, old Dirk was the pillar of the place, an experienced hand who had overseen the plowing and irrigation for decades.
Several gray-haired men leaned over their hoes along the furrows, while nearby, two heavy drays were being loaded with grain sacks.
When the rattle of hooves drew near and they saw Will atop his horse, rough hands rose in welcoming waves across the terraces.
Few folk rode out this far.
Between his natural affinity and his easy manner, Will had made friends with every farmer along the fence line.
Fastened to his saddle was a peasant pitchfork, the legendary bane of witchers everywhere.
Armed with three iron tines, he patrolled the perimeter of a thousand fertile acres.
He felt slightly absurd, looking like a low-rent spearman out of some foreign ballad, but the fields were crawling with pests.
He counted over a dozen varieties infesting the crops, some boring through root systems beneath the soil, others clinging thick beneath the broad leaves.
Keeping his breath steady, he willed the siphon into motion.
Target by target, emerald wisps broke away from the creeping insects, flowing into his core.
Because he could only target one creature at a time, the progress was slow and methodical.
Yet watching the pale text scroll across his field of vision made the patience worthwhile:
[Experience +1]
[Experience +1]
There was a profound satisfaction in watching the counter tick upward, small reapings stacking into an undeniable harvest.
“Master Will! Come sit under the awning, wash your throat with some cold water!”
Dirk’s gravelly shout drifted over the grain stalks.
Will wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve, only then realizing he had been in the saddle for several hours.
Even with his accelerated recovery, his inner thighs felt raw from the friction of the leather.
He swung down, walked over to the trestle table, and drained the tin mug Dirk handed him before dropping onto a rough wooden bench.
“Uncle Dirk, who are those wagons bound for?”
The farmer’s weather-beaten face darkened instantly.
He spat a stray leaf from his mouth and let out a harsh scoff.
“Those Nilfgaardian dogs, who else? Refugees from Cintra are pouring across the borders like spilled grain. Word is some local lords want extra stores to feed cheap labor, so they’ve bought up every spare bushel from last year’s threshing.”
Silence fell over the trestle table.
At the mention of Cintra and Nilfgaard, the neighboring hands stiffened, their expressions going numb.
War in the South had been butchery, and news of the slaughter had sent shockwaves rolling through every court in the Northern Realms.
Last year, in 1263, the proud kingdom of Cintra had fallen.
Its royal line had been put to the sword, Queen Calanthe, the Lioness, throwing herself from the parapets rather than bend the knee, while her granddaughter Cirilla vanished into the smoke.
Then the White Wolf had crossed paths with the merchant Yurga, invoking the Law of Surprise as payment for his protection.
When Geralt followed Yurga home, he found that the child the merchant’s wife had recently sheltered was none other than Ciri herself.
A fated embrace on the doorstep.
The demands of destiny had turned true: that which you already possess but do not know.
Twice Geralt had invoked the Law, and twice destiny had brought the girl back to him.
Will could feel the sands running out.
Given Nenneke’s stubborn temper, she would surely ignore Duke Hereward’s warnings and fling the temple gates wide for the Cintran refugees.
Whether that defiance would bring armed steel down upon their heads remained anyone’s guess.
He had no intention of swaying her mind.
He stood behind her decisions, come what may.
Let the Order of the White Rose or Duke Hereward’s garrison march on their walls; he would face them where they stood.
A fierce, quiet defiance burned in his chest.
To survive this brutal feudal meat grinder, he needed to grow strong enough to break the wheel.
A ripple crossed his vision as the status sheet chimed.
The experience tally had capped out, resetting back to zero, and a fresh line of text settled at the very bottom:
[Free Attribute Points: 1]
Small plus marks lit up beside his attributes and non-Chaos skills.
Without a second thought, Will poured the point straight into Constitution, lifting the score to 7.5.
In this world, durability was the bedrock of survival.
The moment the choice locked in, the pool of vitality within his chest surged outward.
A warm pulse detonated behind his ribs, driving thick, oxygen-rich blood through every capillary.
A profound sensation of renewal swept from his marrow to his skin, bolstering his resistance to toxins, sharpening his cellular recovery, and hardening the outer layers of his flesh.
A full point brought a tremendous leap in vitality.
He closed his eyes, savoring the rush of power settling into his bones.
Having tasted the rewards, his gaze drifted past the furrows toward the ancient canopy of the deep woods.
His next harvest was waiting in the shadows.