Sleep was a shore I couldn’t reach. I lay on my bedroll, listening to the inn’s night sounds: the groan of settling timbers, the far-off murmur of a drunkard singing to the moon, the soft, even breaths of the sorceress in the room’s other bed. Yennefer slept with the same unnerving stillness the watcher in the woods had possessed. A stillness of utter confidence. It grated on me.
My mind kept replaying the moment. The silver thread of memory pulled from Antek’s skull. The violet flare of the spell’s completion. The figure in the woods vanishing. It was a three-part harmony of wrongness, and it played on a loop in my head. Geralt had always said that the nagging feelings, the ones that defy logic and keep you from your rest, are the ones that will save your life. Ignoring them is a luxury for people who don't have teeth aimed for their throat.
Dawn was a promise of bruised lavender and grey when I finally gave up. I slipped from my bedroll, my movements practiced and silent. My leathers didn't protest, worn soft with use. I strapped on my swords—steel for men, silver for monsters. I wasn't sure which category the watcher fell into, or if it was something else entirely. Yennefer didn't stir. The scent of lilac and gooseberries was muted in her sleep, a banked fire instead of a raging storm.
Outside, the air was cold and clean, washing the stale scent of the inn away. The village was a ghost of itself, wrapped in mist that clung to the thatched roofs. I didn't head for the road. I headed for the trees.
The treeline was a dark, jagged mouth. I walked its edge until I found the spot where I had stood last night, a trampled patch of grass my only landmark. From there, I turned, my eyes scanning the woods. I wasn't just looking. I was dissecting the space, letting my witcher senses drink in the details. The gentle sag of a rain-heavy branch. The rustle of a vole in the undergrowth. The faint scent of pine and decay.
I moved into the woods, following the memory of the watcher's position. It had been just behind a trio of ancient, moss-covered oaks. My medallion remained silent, a dead weight against my chest. It offered no help, no confirmation. The uncertainty was worse than a clear threat. A monster, you can prepare for. A man, you can reason with or kill. This quiet *nothing* was a blank page in my bestiary.
I found the oaks. The ground between them was clear of brambles, a small hollow of damp earth and fallen leaves. Last night, that space had held a presence that made the air itself seem to warp. Now, there was nothing. No footprints. No scent besides the forest's own breath. No broken twigs or disturbed leaf litter. It was as if the figure had been a projection, a trick of the light.
But I had felt it. My medallion had felt it. It was real.
I knelt, my fingers tracing the cold dirt. Geralt’s lessons came back to me. *Look for what’s wrong. Not just what’s there, but what’s missing.* There were no insect trails here. The usual network of tiny lines scoring the dirt was gone. A patch of moss on the nearest oak’s root looked singed, its vibrant green turned a sickly brown at the edges. Small things. Easily missed.
My hand brushed over a patch of soil that was colder than the rest. And harder. I scraped away the top layer of leaves. Beneath them, the earth was not earth. It was a disk of dark, fused glass about the size of a dinner plate. It was smooth and cool to the touch, like obsidian, catching the faint morning light with a dull sheen. The ground here had been subjected to an intense, instantaneous energy, but it wasn't heat. Heat leaves a lingering warmth, a smell of charcoal. This was cold. Utterly, unnaturally cold. A scar of negative energy.
And from the very center of that glassy disk, something grew.
It was a single flower. It rose on a pale, slender stem, its six petals unfurled in a perfect, geometric arrangement. They were a shade of blue I’d never seen in nature, a piercing, ethereal colour that seemed to drink the light. They weren't soft. When I touched the edge of one with my fingertip, it felt like cool, thin wax. Brittle. The flower had no scent. No pollen dusted its intricate center. It was a perfect, sterile imitation of life.
This wasn't sorcery. Not Yennefer’s kind, anyway. This was something else. A weed from a garden I couldn’t imagine. It had grown overnight from vitrified soil. Impossible.
My training screamed at me to leave it, to report it, to treat it as a threat. But it was also evidence. It was the only tangible piece of the puzzle I possessed. Carefully, I snapped the brittle stem at its base. The sound was a faint *click*, like ice cracking. I wrapped the impossible flower in a spare piece of rag from my pouch, the phantom sensation of its waxy petals lingering on my skin.
As I stood, I scraped dirt and leaves back over the glass-like scar on the ground. Cover your tracks. And cover the tracks of things you don’t understand.
When I got back to the inn, Yennefer was sitting up on her bed, brushing her long, black hair. She didn't look at me, but I felt her violet eyes on me in the small mirror she held. The room smelled of lilac again.
“You were out early,” she said. Her voice was casual, but it carried the precision of a scalpel.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I answered, unbuckling my sword belt and laying it by my roll. I tried to keep my movements relaxed, normal.
“The curse is broken. Antek snores like a felled oak. The elders left the coin. Our business here is concluded.” She set the brush down. “There’s no reason for a lack of sleep.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact, and an accusation. You have no reason to be restless *unless you are hiding something*.
I busied myself with checking the edge on my steel sword, my thumb running lightly over the metal. “Force of habit. I don’t sleep well in new places.” A half-truth. The best kind of lie.
She finally turned, her gaze sweeping over me. It was not a glance; it was an inventory. Her eyes paused for a fraction of a second on the pouch at my belt where the flower was hidden. I felt a prickle of cold sweat on my neck. She couldn’t know. She *couldn’t*.
“You smell of the forest,” she said, her voice dropping a little. “Damp earth. Pine sap.” She tilted her head, a predator’s curiosity. “And… something else. Faint. Like the air after a lightning strike, but without the heat.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. I kept my face impassive. “It’s probably just the morning mist.”
Yennefer held my gaze for a long moment. An empire could have risen and fallen in that silence. She knew I was lying, and she knew that I knew she knew. But proving it was another matter. She gave a small, almost imperceptible smile. It did not reach her eyes.
“Of course,” she said, turning back to her mirror. “The mist.”
The dismissal was worse than an interrogation. She was letting me keep my secret, for now. Letting me think I’d gotten away with it. It was a leash, given slack so that when she yanked on it, the choke would be that much harder.
I sat on my bedroll, my back to her. My hand rested on my pouch. Inside, the strange, sterile flower was a cold weight against my hip. A secret I now carried. Last night, I was a guard, a subordinate on a simple contract. This morning, I was a liar and a conspirator, hiding evidence from one of the most powerful sorceresses in the world.
The path had just gotten steeper, and I couldn't see the top.