"Aard Sign?!"
Hearing the name spoken aloud, Lewis was instantly startled. For a brief moment, he tried to come up with some excuse to brush it off, but before he could speak, Cirila's voice cut in, calm yet sharp.
"You're not thinking of bluffing your way out of this, are you, Lewis Green?"
"Unless you want to lose me, don't even try."
"I saw your hand movement and the shockwave clearly. Trust me—I'm very familiar with that sign."
"So, where exactly did you learn it?"
With things already laid out so plainly, Lewis gave up trying to dodge the question. What else could he do? He could only come clean.
"If I told you I figured it out on my own… would you believe me?" he said awkwardly.
"You? Figured it out?" Cirila let out a cold laugh. "Then how do you explain this?"
Without any warning, she suddenly stepped forward, closing the distance in an instant. Her dress didn't restrict her movement at all, and Lewis caught a fleeting glimpse of black beneath the fluttering fabric—but he had no time to dwell on it, because her hand was already striking toward his face.
"Aard Sign."
"Quen Sign."
With a soft whoosh, a faint shockwave burst from her palm, no more than a passing gust of wind. Yet even that breeze failed to touch Lewis. A translucent barrier appeared instantly, shielding him completely.
In that moment, Lewis realized he had been played.
This had been a test from the very beginning. There had been no real intent to attack; otherwise, the Aard Sign wouldn't have been so weak. Cirila knew that in a sudden ambush, without a wand and unable to cast a Shield Charm, Lewis's only viable defense—if he truly knew the signs—would be Quen.
And now, her test had succeeded.
You could claim you had somehow "figured out" Aard on your own, but there was no way you just happened to also figure out Quen in exactly the same form.
Under her knowing gaze, Lewis, thick-skinned as he was, still felt a bit embarrassed. He quickly tried to explain, "Don't misunderstand—I'm telling the truth. I really did develop these signs myself."
Ignoring her "go on, keep lying" expression, he continued, "But there's something I didn't have time to say earlier—I can also perceive the world you come from."
"My… world?"
Cirila's confident expression instantly shattered, replaced by shock. "You know I'm from another world? I thought someone had just taught you those techniques…"
Lewis shook his head. "It's not that simple. Not just anyone can casually travel between worlds—and for that person to also be a witcher? That would be too much of a coincidence."
"You even know about witchers?" Cirila's suspicion softened slightly. "You mentioned traveling between worlds…"
"Yes. I call it 'crossing over'—moving from one world to another," Lewis explained.
"So I crossed into this world too?" she murmured.
"Exactly. Similar to how you can travel between worlds with your own power."
"You even know that…" Cirila shook her head, still amazed. "But after arriving here, I seem to have lost that ability."
She was referring to her power tied to the Elder Blood—the ability to traverse worlds. Yet clearly, this world lay outside the range of that power.
"That's normal," Lewis said. "Because your arrival here wasn't caused by your own ability. This world itself is… special. At some point, it began drawing in things from other worlds."
Cirila nodded slowly. "That makes sense. Otherwise, there's no way creatures from my world would've come along with me. My power can't bring that many things across."
She looked at him again. "Then you must be a traveler too."
Lewis nodded. "I came from a world without magic. I arrived here eleven years ago."
"So you turned into a baby after arriving?" Cirila laughed lightly. "You act so mature—I thought you might've been some old man in your seventies before."
"I'm not that old!" Lewis protested immediately.
"You don't need to explain," she waved him off. "I don't care about that anyway."
She then spoke about herself. "I'm different. I arrived four years ago, when I was twelve. At first, I was wandering the streets, but a few days later, an owl delivered a letter, and Professor Filius Flitwick came to bring me to Hogwarts."
"You were lucky," Lewis said, then added softly, "But losing your grandmother, being separated from your adoptive parents during war, and then ending up trapped in another world… that must've been hard."
Cirila's expression flickered slightly. "You really do know a lot… Don't tell me your 'observation' means you've been spying on me?"
She even adopted a mock defensive stance.
Even in a moment like this, she could joke—she really was strong.
"Nothing like that," Lewis said quickly, feeling a chill at the implication. "Think of it more like prophetic dreams. I can't control what I see—I just happen to glimpse things from other worlds."
Cirila nodded. "If you can say all this, then I believe you. So your signs… you created them based on what you saw from my world?"
"Exactly."
"And when you called my name on the first day…"
"Same reason. I didn't expect to meet someone from those visions. That's when I realized they were real."
He paused, then added sincerely, "But becoming friends with you wasn't planned. I just felt like we were in similar situations… you know?"
"I get it," Cirila laughed openly. "Don't worry. Knowing all this doesn't change anything—we're still partners and friends."
She smiled. "If anything, doesn't sharing secrets make us closer?"
"I'd like to think so," Lewis replied.
"Alright, then," she said, exhaling lightly. "I've asked everything I wanted to ask. I didn't expect things to be this complicated."
She looked at him again. "Your turn. Anything you want to ask? Just for today, I'll answer anything."
Lewis thought for a moment. "Actually… I do have one question. Do you know why all this—this mass crossing—is happening?"
"That's something I want to know too," Cirila admitted. "But if even you haven't figured it out, I doubt I can."
She paused, then added, "Still, I can share what I've found."
"When I first arrived, I thought it was just my power going out of control. But in my second year, I realized something was wrong. My ability hadn't activated once in an entire year, and I saw something in a newspaper—a fiend-like creature from my world. It had never existed here before, yet the article described it as newly discovered."
"After that, I started investigating. And I found more—far more. Creatures and plants from my world appearing here, most of them arriving even earlier than I did."
"Drowners—first seen ten years ago. Fiends—six years ago. Howlers—eight years ago. Ghouls—eleven years ago. Mugwort—ten years ago."
"That's as much as I've been able to uncover."
"Thank you," Lewis said quietly.
As he processed the timeline—ten years, eleven years, eight, six, four—his thoughts deepened.
"The earliest known appearance… eleven years ago. Nothing earlier."
"That means this phenomenon started at least eleven years ago."
"So what happened eleven years ago?"
He froze.
"…Of course."
His gaze lowered slightly.
"Eleven years ago… that's when I arrived in this world."
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