Rewrite That Witch
CH1001 · Rewrite
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Chapter 1001: Unusual Stone Fragment

Wind and snow buffeted Azima as she crossed the street into the Castle District.

Strange, being summoned at this hour. But she trusted Wendy — and that trust had made her agree, despite Doris insisting on coming along. She’d left her friend behind. If anything went wrong, Doris would be safely clear of it.

By the time Azima reached the castle gate, she was shivering beneath her coat, holding herself together with both arms.

“Cold?” Wendy glanced over with a smile. “You won’t need that coat once we’re inside.”

Take off—

Is His Majesty planning to—

“Please enter, Ms. Wendy.” The gate swung open before Azima could finish the thought, and the guard stepped aside. “His Majesty is in the study. Duty keeps me here, I’m afraid.”

“Thank you.” Wendy took Azima’s hand and led her through.

Warm air met them at the threshold — not the gradual warmth of a hearth nearby, but something total, immediate, pressing in from every direction. The cold simply ceased.

The heating system. She’d heard about it. The reality was another matter.

Servants moved through the halls in light clothes, shirts and dresses. A pair of barefoot witches sprinted laughing across the carpeted dining room. The castle was summer in the middle of a blizzard. Azima found herself revising her opinion of Roland Wimbledon: whatever else he was, the man had built Neverwinter for his own comfort.

Wendy had already slipped off her coat. She winked. “You’ll start sweating if you keep yours on. Then freeze the moment you step back outside.”

“All right.” Azima unbuttoned with stiff fingers. She glanced down at herself. Not flat, exactly — but incomparable to Wendy’s, which was an understatement bordering on comedy. If His Majesty had summoned her for carnal pleasures, she was almost certainly the last candidate he’d have chosen. The thought steadied her.

She followed Wendy to the third floor.

“Your Majesty, Azima is here.”

“Your Majesty.”

Azima bowed. Her eyes swept the room — and then settled on the grey-haired man behind the desk.

Young. That was what struck her first. She’d glimpsed him once at the banquet, back when she still worked for the Sleeping Spell. Up close, the impression deepened into astonishment. He couldn’t be past thirty. And this was the man who had defeated his siblings, taken the throne, rooted out the Church, and swallowed every other kingdom whole.

She could challenge Tilly. She’d done it, and survived it. But this was different. The whole kingdom was his. Everyone beneath the sky of Graycastle was beneath his reach — and that included Doris, and the others, who lacked her particular willingness to push back. She held her tongue.

“Please rise.” His voice was easy, unhurried. “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, actually. I apologize for the late hour — but I couldn’t wait. Your ability matters greatly to this kingdom. Now that the moment is right, I didn’t see any point in delaying.”

Azima looked up. “You’re offering me a job?”

It sounded like one of the Witch Union’s special commissions. The kind with elevated compensation.

“Yes — with competitive terms.” He lifted his cup, drank, set it down. “Two gold royals per month until the task is complete. Fifty gold royals upon completion. Does that suit you?”

Her pulse jumped.

Two royals a month. Without the bonus, that alone matched what the Sleeping Spell had paid. She could support herself, contribute to the others — and with fifty more at the end, she could give Whitepear a real start, or begin one herself.

This is exactly what I need.

But she’d lived too long on the road to swallow a nobleman’s promise without chewing it first. Even sovereigns broke their word.

“It’s generous,” she said. “Tell me what you want before I answer.”

Her ability had served her in the wilderness — water sources, prey, buried fruit. Neverwinter had no shortage of any of that. She waited.

Roland reached into his desk drawer and set a small box on the surface. He opened it. Inside: a fragment of stone, thumb-sized, flat, smooth, cold. Grey-black. It looked like nothing — like something a child might pick up from a riverbank and throw away.

“I want you to find more of this.”

“May I?”

“Of course.”

She picked it up. It sat in her palm, featureless, unremarkable. She turned it once. A polished piece, carefully shaped — someone had worked it deliberately. But she still couldn’t see why.

“I should tell you — tracing a stone’s origin isn’t always straightforward.” She chose her words carefully. “On Sleeping Island, a merchant house hired me to locate the source of some gems. My ability led them to Searing Flame Island. Nothing there but hot, dry sand. The Sleeping Spell had to reimburse their expedition costs.”

“That sand was bauxite,” Roland said, unconcerned. “The origin of gems, in a chemical sense. Your reading was accurate.” He tilted his head. “Try it now. Let’s see what happens.”

Azima held the fragment and reached inward, the way she always did — a quiet attention to the stone, then a slow release of her power outward—

The palm of her hand erupted in blinding green light.

She flinched. Source-class reaction. She hadn’t seen this intensity since she’d accidentally traced a city treasury. The light was that strong, that consuming, that alive.

Then a second flash burst from Roland’s desk.

Azima stood still, ears ringing with shock.

The flashes — only she could see them — told her two things simultaneously: where the source material was, and roughly how much existed. Usually it came as scattered sparks, fireflies threading the dark. This was a beacon.

Source material. She understood it now. That was what he’d called it, implicitly — these plain, lusterless fragments were source-class ore.

She had never seen a sample this small react so violently.

She thought of the day she’d accidentally traced a gold royal fallen in a street — and her attempt to use her power on loose coins, abandoned quickly when the odds proved laughable. She’d mapped the brightest reactions to the treasury under the lord’s castle. That reaction and this one were the same magnitude.

Is this stone worth more than gold?

She held the question and looked at the king.

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