The descent from the ruins of Temesia was a trial of endurance. Filip was a dead weight, a sack of frozen meat and bone, and the mountain path was a treacherous slide of scree and ice. Geralt's wounded shoulder screamed in protest with every shifting step, a fiery counterpoint to the biting cold. Yet, he moved with a grim determination, his breath pluming in ragged gasps. The boy's faint, thready heartbeat was a drum he marched to, a fragile rhythm in the vast silence of the mountains.
He did not go directly to Karel's hut. He went to the village healer, a crone named Magda who lived in a hut pungent with the smell of drying fungi and boiled roots. Her eyes, sharp as flint in a nest of wrinkles, widened at the sight of the witcher and his burden. Without a word, she cleared a pallet by the fire.
"Put him here. Gently."
Geralt laid Filip down. The boy's lips were violet, his skin waxen. Magda set to work with an efficiency that belied her age. She rubbed his limbs with a pungent salve of mustard and feverfew, wrapped him in warmed sheepskins, and dripped a tincture of crushed mountain-avens and hot water between his parted lips.
"His soul was halfway to the meadow," she muttered, her hands never still. "The cold… it preserved the shell, but the wind was trying to steal the spark. You got him back just in time. Or maybe past it."
For an hour, Geralt stood sentinel by the door, watching the slow, agonizing fight for life. The potions in his own system had faded, leaving him hollowed out and aching. The silence in the hut was broken only by the crackle of the fire and Magda's occasional grunts.
Then, a cough. A shallow, racking sound. Filip's body convulsed once, and a sliver of pink returned to his cheeks. His eyelids fluttered.
Magda sat back on her heels, wiping her hands on her apron. "He'll live. Though what he'll remember of the other side, only the gods know. And you, witcher."
Geralt nodded, a tight, weary gesture. He placed a small pouch of coins on her table—his payment from Doln, the one he'd intended to live on for the next month. Magda didn't thank him, but she gave a slow, acknowledging blink.
"The white lady?" she asked.
"At peace."
The crone's face did something complicated, a mix of relief and superstitious fear. "Good. Then maybe the mountains will be quiet again. For a while."
News traveled faster than a galloping horse in a small place. By the time Geralt stepped back into the thin daylight, a small crowd had gathered outside Magda's hut. They weren't hostile, but they weren't welcoming either. They were a wall of weathered faces and watchful eyes. Old Man Karel pushed to the front, his blind eyes searching the air where Geralt stood.
"Filip?" The word was a cracked plea.
"Alive. Recovering."
A collective sigh, a release of tension held for a season. Karel's shoulders slumped, and he reached out a trembling hand. Geralt took it. The old man's grip was ferocious. "You kept your word."
"She kept hers," Geralt replied softly.
This seemed to mean something to the villagers. A woman brought forward a wedge of hard cheese wrapped in cloth. A man offered a skin of potent, herbal liquor. It wasn't much, but it was acknowledgment. He had not just returned a boy; he had lifted a shadow from the valley. He was no longer just a passing mutant; he was Geralt, who had spoken to their ghost and brought back their dead.
He accepted the provisions with a nod, then retreated to the tavern. He needed to think, to plan. The innkeeper, seeing him return, silently refilled his ale and placed a bowl of thick mutton stew before him. This time, the shepherds at the other table raised their mugs in his direction. A subtle, profound shift.
As he ate, forcing the hot food into his weary body, he pieced together the next step. He had promised Lenore he would free her stolen fragment. That meant returning to Fen Hythe. But walking back into that nest of vipers without a plan was suicide. Mastic would have reinforced his security. De Ruyter's guards would be on high alert.
He needed leverage. He needed to strike at the project itself, not just its products. Aldous, the disgraced alchemist, had mentioned the catalyst—Alba Corpus. It was the key to the forced mutations. If he could find its source, or better yet, a way to nullify it, he could render de Ruyter's entire monstrous endeavor inert.
But first, he needed to understand the target. De Ruyter had spoken of a Viscount, and a situation that was "tiring." Geralt turned to the innkeeper as she passed.
"The lands to the south. Who holds them?"
She paused, wiping her hands. "South of the Murkwold? That's the Viscount of Alderberg's domain. Lord de Ruyter's liege lord. Though there's no love lost, from what the traders say. The Viscount is an old man, traditional. Holds tournaments, collects taxes, believes in the old ways. De Ruyter… he's new money. Timber and ambition. They say the Viscount blocks his expansions, denies him licenses for new mills. Politics." She said the last word like it was a curse.
So, that was it. De Ruyter wanted to clear his lands of "troublesome" villagers and remove the feudal obstacle above him. A two-fold plan: let his mutated creatures cull the peasantry, then use a perfected spectral assassin to remove his lord, leaving the lands in chaos, ready for a strong, "unfortunate" neighbor to step in and restore order. It was brutish, but it had a certain cynical elegance.
Geralt finished his stew. The path was becoming horrifically clear. He couldn't just be a witcher anymore. He had to be a spoiler. A thorn in the side of a carefully laid, monstrous plan.
He spent the night in the tavern's loft, listening to the wind moan through the mountain passes. His sleep was fitful, filled with dreams of blue-tinged screams and the cold, clinical gaze of Lord de Ruyter. At first light, he was preparing to leave when a voice stopped him at the stable.
"Witcher."
It was Old Man Karel, wrapped in a threadbare cloak, guided by a young boy, Filip's cousin. The old man's face was grave.
"You're leaving to finish it," Karel said. It wasn't a question.
"I made a promise."
Karel nodded. "The piece of her they took. It will be in a place of metal and despair. A cage within a cage." He fumbled in his pouch and pulled out something—a small, smooth river stone, worn flat by water, with a single, natural hole in its center. "This is a seeing-stone. My people, the old mountain folk, used them. It sees nothing for most. But for those who look with more than eyes… sometimes it shows a thread. A connection. Hold it. Think of her peace, and of the sickness they put in her. It might point your way."
Geralt took the stone. It was warm from the old man's hand. It felt utterly ordinary. But he had learned to trust the wisdom of those who lived close to the edge of the world. He tucked it into a secure pocket. "Thank you."
"Thank you," Karel said, his blind eyes moist. "You gave me back my son. You gave her back her peace. Remember, witcher: some debts are paid in kind, not coin."
The weight of that statement sat with Geralt as he rode Roach out of the Temesian valley, heading not east towards Oxenfurt, but south-west, skirting the edges of de Ruyter's lands. He needed a new angle of approach. He remembered Aldous mentioning the supplies for the Alba Corpus: Wyvern Embryo Extract, Powdered Dimeritium. Such components weren't bought at a market stall. They required a specialized supplier, likely one who asked few questions.
His destination was a place called The Crossroads, a notorious mercantile freehold that existed in a grey area between three kingdoms' jurisdictions. It was a den of smugglers, informants, and specialized merchants catering to clients who preferred their transactions unrecorded.
The journey took four days of hard riding. The Crossroads was not a town, but a sprawling, fortified compound of warehouses, taverns, and pens for exotic beasts. The air smelled of spice, dung, and forge-smoke. Here, a witcher drew only cursory glances; strangeness was the currency.
He found the supplier in a dim, basement-level establishment called "The Argentum Gild." The proprietor was a lean, ageless man with ink-stained fingers and the calm demeanor of a librarian, which, in a way, he was—a librarian of contraband.
"I'm looking for information," Geralt said, placing a gold mark on the counter. "About a specific catalyst. Alba Corpus."
The man didn't touch the coin. His eyes, pale and assessing, flicked over Geralt's medallion. "A dangerous curiosity. Theoretical."
"It's being manufactured. Used in the Temerian foothills. I need to know who supplies its components here. Wyvern Embryo. Powdered Dimeritium."
"Even more dangerous knowledge." The man sighed, a soft, papery sound. He finally picked up the coin. "The dimeritium powder is rare. Only one batch has come through here in the last year. It was purchased by proxy for a client in the Murkwold region. The wyvern material… that came from a different source. A hunter-specialist who works the peaks near Maecht. He's due here tomorrow to sell a fresh haul."
Geralt felt a surge of cold focus. A link in the chain. "I'll be here."
He spent the night in a state of heightened alert, sleeping in the Roach's stall rather than risk a room. The Crossroads was a place where a throat could be cut for the boots on your feet.
At noon the next day, the hunter arrived. He was a mountain of a man, swathed in furs, with a face scarred by claws and frost. He dragged a sled laden with grisly trophies: griffin claws, forktail spines, and several sealed, lead-lined jars. One of them, small and ominous, was labeled with a wyvern sigil.
Geralt intercepted him as he negotiated with a bored-looking factor. "The wyvern embryo. I need to know who bought the last one."
The hunter turned, his small eyes glinting with menace. "Piss off, mutant. My business is mine."
Geralt didn't blink. "The man you sold it to is using it to make monsters that kill villages. Not for food, not for defense. For politics. The blood is on your hands as much as his."
A flicker of uncertainty crossed the hunter's brutal face. He was a killer, but of beasts, not men. The distinction mattered to some of his kind. "I sell to the highest bidder. He had the coin. A fancy little man with glasses, smelled of chemicals. Paid in Redanian gold."
Mastic. "And if that gold was stained with the blood of children?"
The hunter spat. "Don't try your morality on me. I live in the real world." But his bluster had faded. He looked at the jar. "This one's already sold anyway. Same buyer. He's expecting it."
An idea, reckless and sharp, formed in Geralt's mind. "How much?"
"Fifty crowns."
It was nearly everything he had left. Geralt counted out the coins, a small fortune earned from a dozen dirty, dangerous jobs. The hunter handed over the jar, looking almost relieved to be rid of it and the witcher's accusing gaze.
Back in the shadowy stable, Geralt held the jar. Inside, suspended in a clear, viscous fluid, was a tiny, alien shape, a promise of wings and venom snuffed out before it began. It was a thing of potent, raw potential. And it was the key ingredient for the poison that was twisting Lenore's fragment.
He didn't have the skill to craft an antidote. But Aldous might. Or he could use the jar for something else—a Trojan horse, a way to get close.
As he contemplated his next move, he felt the seeing-stone grow warm in his pocket. He pulled it out. Through the hole in its center, he wasn't looking at the stable wall. For a fleeting second, his vision seemed to tunnel, to warp. He saw a blur of silver bars, a pulse of sickly blue light, and felt a wave of desolation so profound it stole his breath. Then it was gone.
The stone was just a stone again.
But it was enough. Karel was right. It had shown him a thread. A thread of suffering that led back to Fen Hythe. He had the component, he had the direction, and he had the weight of two promises on his shoulders—one to a dead woman, and one, silently made, to the people of Doln and Temesia.
He packed the jar carefully into his saddlebag. The path ahead led back into the lion's den. But this time, he wasn't going in just to see. He was going in to break the cage.