Chapter 20: HOLDING THE LINE
Geralt left at dawn.
No ceremony, no lengthy goodbyes. Just a final exchange of looks with each of us—acknowledgment, trust, unspoken promises—before he disappeared down the mountain path. Finding Yennefer would take days at minimum. Convincing her to help might take longer.
Which means we have to survive whatever comes next on our own.
The first day after Geralt's departure, I reorganized the keep's defenses.
"Nullification checkpoints here, here, and here." I pointed at the map Vesemir had spread across the great hall's table. "Every major corridor and the approaches to Ciri's quarters. If something moves through those areas that isn't one of us, the ambient dampening should at least slow it down."
"Can you maintain that many points?" Vesemir asked.
"Not actively. But the System—" I caught myself, amended: "—but my abilities include a kind of passive detection. I can set wards that alert me when something supernatural enters their radius."
[SKILL UNLOCKED: ANTI-POSSESSION WARD (BASIC)]
[COST: 10 SP PER WARD, PASSIVE DETECTION]
Lambert studied the map with unusual seriousness. "What about Eskel's cell? Can you reinforce it?"
"Already done. Three layers of suppression around the perimeter." I rubbed my still-healing ribs. "But she's not trying to break him out. She's using him as an anchor—a foothold inside the keep. As long as he's here, she can reach through."
"Then we move him?"
"To where? She'd follow. And moving him means risking the chains failing during transport."
No good answers. Just bad ones and worse ones.
"We hold," Vesemir decided. "Keep watches. Document any changes in Eskel's condition. And pray Geralt finds Yennefer quickly."
The training began on the second day.
Not sword forms or combat drills—we'd done enough of those. This was different. Mental fortification. Psychological defense against a predator that operated in thoughts and dreams.
[SKILL UNLOCKED: MENTAL FORTRESS (BASIC)]
[EFFECT: +15% RESISTANCE TO MENTAL INTRUSION]
[COST: PASSIVE — NO SP DRAIN]
The System provided frameworks I hadn't known existed—techniques for hardening the mind against external influence, for recognizing when thoughts weren't your own, for building walls that couldn't be breached by whispered promises or manufactured memories.
I taught what I could to the others. Ciri learned fastest—her Elder Blood gave her natural resistance that just needed direction. Lambert struggled but persisted, his stubbornness serving him better than any talent would have. Vesemir already knew most of it from centuries of facing things that wanted inside his head.
"Imagine your mind as a fortress," I said during one session, all of us seated in the training yard with eyes closed. "Stone walls. Iron gates. Guards at every entrance."
"I prefer imagining minds as sewers," Lambert muttered. "Mine certainly feels like one most days."
Despite everything, Ciri laughed. The sound echoed off the courtyard walls—brief and surprised, but real.
Small victories. That's all we have right now.
Voleth Meir found me on the third night.
The dream started normally—fragments of memory, half-formed images, the usual chaos of an exhausted mind trying to process impossible circumstances. Then the chaos organized itself into something deliberate.
I stood in a chamber I didn't recognize. Elder architecture—similar to my awakening room but older, darker. The air tasted of rot and honey.
"The First Blade."
She materialized from shadow. Not the rotting corpse from stories—not yet. Instead, she wore the face of an old woman: kind features, grandmother's smile, eyes that held centuries of patient hunger.
"We should talk."
"I don't think so."
"No?" She circled me, trailing fingers across my shoulder. I couldn't move—dream logic held me frozen despite my attempts to break free. "You're fighting a war you cannot win, child. I've been imprisoned beneath these stones since before the Conjunction. I've watched empires rise and fall while your ancestors were still learning to make fire."
"And yet you're still in a box underground."
Her smile didn't waver. "Patience is my greatest virtue. I've learned to wait. But you—" She stopped circling, facing me directly. "You're something new. Something the architects of your body didn't anticipate."
She knows what I am. Of course she does—she's been listening since I woke up.
"I felt you break those seals," she continued. "So much power, wasted on escape when you could have wielded it as a weapon. We could help each other, you and I. The girl's power threatens to consume everything. I could teach you to... redirect it."
"By possessing her? Burning through her like you're burning through Eskel?"
"Eskel volunteered." Her expression shifted, showing teeth that were too sharp, too numerous. "His pain called to me. His loneliness. His fear of being forgotten while his brothers built lives and he remained behind, slowly rotting." The grandmother's face melted into something else—something ancient and hollow and endlessly hungry. "Everyone has a price, First Blade. I wonder what yours will be."
"Here's my answer."
I pushed. The Mental Fortress skill activated, walls slamming up around my consciousness, forcing the dream to fragment—
She laughed as the vision dissolved. "We'll speak again. Soon."
I woke gasping, heart pounding, the taste of rot still coating my tongue.
The barracks were quiet. Lambert snored from his bunk. Vesemir's bed was empty—he'd taken the midnight watch.
She's in my head now. She knows I exist, knows what I can do, and she's not going to stop.
I didn't sleep again that night. Instead, I walked the corridors, checking wards, reinforcing mental defenses, preparing for an assault I couldn't predict.
Near dawn, I found Ciri sitting outside Eskel's cell.
She looked up as I approached. Dark circles under her eyes. She hadn't been sleeping either.
"Couldn't stay in my room," she said. "Every time I close my eyes..."
"I know."
I settled onto the cold stone beside her. The door between us and Eskel was thick enough to muffle most sounds, but occasionally his voice filtered through—fragments of plea or threat, impossible to distinguish at this distance.
"He doesn't deserve this," Ciri whispered. "He was kind to me. Patient. Never made me feel like a burden."
"We'll save him."
"You keep saying that."
"Because I mean it."
We sat in silence until the sun rose through the arrow slits, painting the corridor in gold and shadow. Neither of us moved to leave.
This is what protecting looks like. Not just fighting monsters. Watching beside someone who's scared.
A raven arrived on the fourth day.
Vesemir decoded the message while the rest of us watched, tension coiling tighter with each passing moment.
"Geralt found her," he said finally. "They're returning. Should arrive within two days."
Relief flooded through me—brief, fragile, immediately complicated by the scream that echoed from Eskel's cell.
Not a plea this time. A promise.
"She's coming for you, girl." Voleth Meir's voice, carrying through stone and iron. "All your defenders. All your walls. They won't be enough." Laughter like bones grinding together. "I've been patient. But patience has an end."
Ciri's hand found mine. I didn't pull away.
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