The journey to the far north was a long, silent trek through the jagged passes of the Blue Mountains. Ciri led the way, her silver sword clinking against her armor, while Jacob followed like a ghost. He still clutched his satchel of dried herbs—the only remains of his dream to become a doctor—but his eyes remained hollow, fixed on the trail ahead.
Originally, Ciri had no intention of making the boy a Witcher. She had brought him along simply to save a life. She thought he could help rebuild the crumbling stones of Kaer Morhen and learn enough swordsmanship to defend himself in a world that had become increasingly violent. She wanted him to be a survivor, not a mutant.
But as the days passed, she saw the depth of his despair. Jacob was completely heartbroken. He didn't eat unless prompted; he didn't speak of the future. Having lost his family, his friends, and his entire village to a Nilfgaardian misfire, he felt he had nothing left to live for.
Ciri realized that if she left him as he was, the grief would eventually consume him. He needed more than just a place to sleep; he needed a reason to move forward.
"The world is tearing itself apart, Jacob," Ciri said one night as they camped beneath a shelf of granite. "Between the Technocratic Union and the Nilfgaardian Empire, everyone is being forced to pick a side. But there is a third way. A way that belongs to no king and no parliament."
She looked at him, her amber eyes steady. She decided that she would put him through the mutations—not because he was expendable, but because the life of a Witcher offered a singular, grounding focus: the hunt. It was a path of strict neutrality. Witchers didn't fight for Reunification or Independence; they fought for the coin that kept the monsters away from the common folk.
By turning him into a Witcher, she could keep him away from the political machines of both the Old and New Worlds. She wanted to give him a purpose that was his own, one that would turn his pain into a shield for others.
"I can't give you back your family," she told him firmly. "But I can give you a life where you are never a helpless bystander again. You will hunt the things that hide in the dark, and you will answer to no one."
Jacob looked up, his blue eyes meeting her amber ones. For the first time since the village fell, a flicker of something other than sadness appeared in his gaze. It wasn't hope, but a grim, cold determination.
They reached the iron gates of Kaer Morhen as the first frost settled on the battlements. The ancient fortress was quiet, a relic of a past age, but for Jacob, it was the beginning of a transformation. He would leave the literate dreams of a village doctor behind and enter the trial of the grass.
******
The cold stone of Kaer Morhen's lower hall hummed not with magic, but with the steady drip of alchemical condensers. In the center of the room, a group of orphans sat huddled around a small coal heater. They were a rare collection of the displaced—children found in the wake of Nilfgaardian "reunification" or picked up from the industrial slums of the North.
"They say the modern mutations don't kill anymore," whispered a boy named Elred, his voice echoing against the vaulted ceiling. "Not like in the old books. Robin's chemistry made the mutagens stable. No one dies on the table now."
"Doesn't mean it's easy," a girl named Masha countered, hugging her knees. "I saw a boy from the Crane School last spring. He survived, but he couldn't stop shaking for a month. The adults won't tell us the rest. They talk about 'side effects' and 'neural remapping' in those scholar-voices of theirs. It's still a nightmare, even if you wake up from it."
The children fell into a somber silence. This was the paradox of the modern Witcher. Thanks to the technological advancement of the Trial of Grasses, the mortality rate had dropped to zero, yet the number of Witchers remained critically low. The process was still an agonizing ordeal of cellular restructuring—a pain so great that no sane parent would ever volunteer their child for it, regardless of the improved reputation of the profession.
Witcher schools were forced to rely on orphans, the only children with no one to shield them from the path. Even then, the schools were selective, and the initiates were few.
"Why do it then?" Elred asked, looking toward the dark corner where Jacob sat. "Why stay for the pain if we don't have to?"
"Because out there, the world is a machine that doesn't care if you're in its way," Masha replied quietly. "Here, if you survive the pain, you become the one who stops the machine."
Jacob listened, his fingers absentmindedly tracing the worn leather cover of his herbology book. He didn't join the debate. He didn't care about the "neural remapping" or the hidden side effects the masters whispered about in the laboratories. To him, the physical agony of the Trial was a distant concern compared to the hollow ache in his chest.
He had nothing to lose. The fire that had claimed his village had already burned away his fear of pain. He looked at the other kids—some trembling, some defiant—and realized they were all looking for a way to belong to something that couldn't be taken away by an airstrike or a parliamentary decree.
When the heavy oak door at the end of the hall creaked open, signaling the start of the evening's medical preparations, Jacob was the first to stand.
He didn't wait for a command. He walked toward the laboratory light, ready to trade his humanity for the strength to never be a victim again. The pain was just another law of nature he had to master.