The air in this forgotten hamlet tasted of wet peat and secrets. Good. Simple places with simple fears were the easiest coin. Ghouls in the graveyard, a basilisk in the quarry. This, though, wasn't simple. It had the stench of people, which was always worse.
I leaned against the rough-hewn fence marking the edge of Elder Antek’s property, the damp chilling me through my leathers. My medallion, a placid wolf’s head, remained still against my sternum. No monsters nearby. Only the human kind. From here, I had a clear view of the elder’s thatched cottage and the treeline that pressed in on all sides, a fist closing around the village.
Magic had a smell. Geralt’s Signs were quick, sharp things—the tang of ozone after an Igni, the scent of flint striking steel with an Aard. They were tools, used and put away. Yennefer’s magic was a physical presence. It saturated the air, a rolling storm front of lilac and gooseberries that promised immense power and gave no quarter. It was beautiful, and it made my teeth ache.
I pulled the small, worn journal from my belt pouch. The leather was scarred, the tie-down thong nearly frayed through. Inside, my charcoal stick scratched against the rough parchment.
*Nekker. Velen bog-road. Three.*
*Ghoul. Below the miller’s bridge. Two.*
*Drowner. Crooked-Tooth Bog. One.*
A name for a name. An entry for every life taken, monster or not. Geralt thought it was a morbid ledger for tracking experience. He didn’t understand that it wasn’t for me to remember my skill. It was so they wouldn’t be forgotten. A litany of the dead I was responsible for, a weight I had to carry in ink because my memory was a shoddy, unreliable vessel. Otherwise, they were just… gone. Another mess wiped up by a witcher. Another corpse for the crows, its story ending in my sword. I couldn't bear that.
The light inside the cottage shifted. Yennefer had begun.
“Guard the perimeter,” she’d said, her violet eyes scanning the pathetic collection of huts as if they were a stain on the landscape. Her voice was like cut crystal, all sharp angles and clarity. “Keep your senses sharp. Nothing living or dead crosses that threshold until I emerge.” She hadn’t been speaking to a partner. She’d been giving an order to a sentient blade.
The contract was a curse. Antek was wasting away, plagued by nightmares that followed him into the day. He clawed at his own face, screaming about a ‘woman made of branches’ who watched him from the corner of his eye. Classic curse symptoms. Yennefer had named her price—a chest of Temerian orens the village had been saving for a decade—and the surviving elders had agreed without a single haggle. Desperation was a fine lubricant for any negotiation.
Through the single grimy window, I saw her silhouette move. A soft, purple light pulsed, outlining the elder’s trembling form on his cot. Her hands moved in intricate, hypnotic patterns, weaving something in the air. The scent of lilac intensified, sharp and almost painful. This was the work. Unraveling the knot of a curse was like delicate surgery, separating the parasitic magic from the host’s life force without killing them both.
I watched, my hand resting on the hilt of my silver sword by instinct. This was the part of the Path I was still learning to accept: sometimes the answer wasn’t a blade. Sometimes it was patience. Watching. Waiting for the true threat to reveal itself.
Then she did something wrong.
Or rather, not part of the stated job. Her left hand continued its slow, graceful weave, holding the structure of the de-cursing spell steady. But her right hand… it darted forward, two fingers touching the elder’s temple. The pulse of light from her spellwork was a deep, steady violet. But from her fingertips, a different light emerged. It was a thin, searing silver, no thicker than a spider’s thread. It wasn't severing the curse that clung to him like a black rot; it was *pulling* something else out. Something clean.
I leaned forward, squinting. It looked like she was drawing a memory from him, spooling the glittering thread of it around her fingers. The elder didn’t react, lost in the throes of the ritual. Yennefer’s face, half-hidden in shadow, was a mask of intense concentration. She wasn't just lifting a curse. She was gathering intelligence. Stealing it, right out of a dying man's skull.
Suddenly, a flicker.
My head snapped toward the treeline. My medallion gave a faint, almost imperceptible hum. Not a monster. Not a man. Something else. I slipped away from the fence, melting into the deeper shadows along the edge of the woods. My boots made no sound on the damp soil. Geralt had taught me that much.
Whatever it was, it stood just inside the cover of the ancient oaks, a subtle distortion in the gloom. A shape that was almost human but whose stillness was utterly wrong. A predator’s stillness. I crept along the tree line, circling to get a better angle. The thing didn’t move. It just… watched the cottage. It watched Yennefer.
My fingers brushed the medallion again. It trembled faintly, a confused, uncertain vibration. It didn't know what it was sensing. I drew my silver sword, the sound of it clearing the scabbard swallowed by the whisper of the wind.
Inside the cottage, the lilac-scented magic swelled to a crescendo. I risked a glance. Yennefer held the silver thread, now a small, brilliant star of light in her palm. With a sharp, final gesture, she closed her fist, and the light vanished. At the same instant, the violet glow of the main spell flared, an explosion of pure energy that flooded the cottage and poured from the window, momentarily blinding me.
When my vision cleared, two things had happened.
The figure in the woods was gone. Vanished without a trace, leaving only the disquieting hum in the air and the ghost of its presence on my senses.
And the door to the cottage was opening. Yennefer stepped out. She looked tired, the way a smith looks after a long day at the forge. Drained, but satisfied. She saw me standing at the edge of the woods, sword in hand, and one perfect eyebrow arched.
“Trouble?”
I sheathed my sword. “Thought I saw something.”
“A frightenend deer? A villager taking a late-night piss?” She wasn’t asking. She was dismissing. She held out a hand, and I saw a smudge of dirt on her perfect porcelain skin. The first crack in the facade. “The contract is complete. Antek will sleep soundly. They can leave the coin on the stump by the road.”
She turned to go, but I took a step forward. My own initiative. My own damn question. “The curse. What was it tied to?”
Yennefer paused, her back to me. For a moment, I thought she wouldn’t answer. “A foolish promise made to a bitter heart,” she said, the words clipped and sterile. “Nothing that concerns you.”
She walked away, leaving me in the sudden, echoing silence. The heavy scent of her magic was already dissipating, replaced by the mundane smell of mud and wet leaves. The contract was complete. Payment was secured. But standing there, with the phantom hum of that watching figure still vibrating in my bones, I knew she hadn’t given a single true answer. She hadn't broken a curse. She had pulled a thread, and I had the terrible feeling we were all about to find out what it was attached to.