Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 1224: The Remedy

“How do you know her?”

Lan’s voice was perfectly calm. “I was born here. That doesn’t mean I know nothing of your world. Have you heard of the Realm of Mind? The Origin of Magic?”

Kabradhabi’s words surfaced at once. Roland’s hand, already reaching toward the broken cup on the floor, stopped in mid-air. He abandoned the cup, leaned across the table, and asked in a low voice: “Is she in the Realm of Mind?”

“No. But she left a mark there. Anyone who passes through the world with sufficient power leaves a mark in the Realm of Mind.” Lan paused, then resumed. “I know what you want to ask. You want to know how to bring her back, and then do it yourself without anyone’s help. You also want to understand how to stop the Battle of Divine Will. But I have to tell you: we don’t have much time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Marks in the Realm of Mind fade. The process is irreversible. Even if you know the method, you may not have the time to act on it — and that isn’t even the worst of it.”

“What is the worst?”

“The Dream World has intruded on God’s territory,” Lan said. “He will not allow this to continue indefinitely. When He concludes that nothing can correct it, He will destroy both worlds.” She folded her hands on the table. “The situation is more urgent than you think. That is why I decided to approach you directly. Child — help me. In doing so, you will also be helping yourself.”

“Convincing,” Roland said. “But you just finished telling me the truth is only what I can understand. Which means everything you’re saying right now could be a lie, including the part about Ashes.”

Lan exhaled slowly and leaned back. “You can think that. I said it because I don’t want to give you false hope. I mentioned it because I want you to trust me — and I knew nothing else would move you.”

Roland said nothing.

It was not a comfortable silence. Lan’s argument was tight. He had heard enough from the magic creatures themselves to know the Dream World was under threat; he had long since concluded that they were agents of something larger, something that wanted this world gone. Lan’s word for that something was God. The logic held.

But he could not take her word for it — not for any of it, and certainly not for Ashes — without independent confirmation he didn’t have and no clear way to get. All the information about the threat to God, the danger of the Dream World’s expansion, the fading marks in the Realm of Mind: it was her version. It might be accurate. It might be entirely false. He had no instrument for measuring the difference.

And yet he didn’t have time to build one.

He closed his eyes.

He thought of the night Tilly had wept until she couldn’t stand upright. He had watched the light in her go dull — not dramatically, not all at once, but in the way a gemstone goes when someone breathes on it and doesn’t wipe it clean. Some people called that kind of grief a form of maturity: only loss teaches you to cherish what remains. Roland had always found that theory obscene. A person who truly understood value would fight not to lose the thing in the first place. They would not console themselves afterward by claiming the wound had made them wiser.

If there was a way to bring Ashes back, he would pursue it. That much was not in question.

He pressed down the surge of feeling and sat again, forcing his expression into something neutral.

“I can’t trust you yet. Tell me how you plan to bring her back.”

“It doesn’t conflict with what I need from you. In fact, they’re the same action.” Lan set her cup down. “To begin, you must enter the Realm of Mind in both worlds simultaneously. Without that, nothing else is possible.”

“Both worlds,” Roland said. “Then the Origin of Magic actually exists — not as a concept, but as a physical location?”

“Yes. It is entirely different from the hollow created by the Erosion — that is an absence, a place where something was removed. The Origin of Magic is a presence. A physical entity.” She nodded. “It sits at the northern end of the Land of Dawn. We call it the Bottomless Land.”

Roland’s pulse jumped. He had heard that name before.

“The demons control the north,” he said. “You know what demons are — they’re my enemy in this war.”

“I cannot help you with anything concerning your world,” Lan said flatly. “God forbids my interference in the Battle of Divine Will. That part is yours to resolve alone. Defeat them. Reach the Bottomless Land. If you fail — then it ends there.”

That was what she had meant earlier: even knowing the method, he might not have enough time to carry it out.

Roland thought for a moment. “All right. I intend to drive the demons from the Land of Dawn regardless. So tell me how to reach the Realm of Mind in the Dream World. It isn’t a physical world — surely that part is simpler.”

“Before I answer,” Lan said, and turned to look through the window, “do you genuinely believe this world is false?”

Roland followed her gaze.

The rush hour had dissolved. The stalls were quieter now — vendors leaning against their counters, wrapping unsold goods, trading words with neighbors. The students and young professionals were gone. The elders had come out to do their shopping at the slow pace of people who have finished being in a hurry. Two of them passed the Rose Café and exchanged a contemptuous murmur, the kind directed at something they had decided, without examining it, was pretentious.

Roland watched them.

He knew that if he stepped outside and challenged those two old men, they would come back at him with fierce, certain opinions, and a small audience would form to watch, delighted. He had no interest in becoming a street spectacle.

But the question unsettled him. He found it genuinely difficult to answer.

“How do you define real?” Lan said, half to herself. “Must a living being have physical mass? If something has consciousness and emotion — if it loves and fears and makes choices — is that not enough? Even if it exists as energy rather than matter?”

“I think it is,” Roland said.

Lan turned back to him. “Then protect this world. If it is destroyed, everything in it disappears — not just objects, but minds, histories, relationships. That loss would exceed anything you might lose in the other world. And if the Dream World falls, you lose your access to the Realm of Mind permanently.”

“Is the entrance in this city?”

“You are already in the Realm of Mind,” Lan said. “This world — this entire Dream World — is the Realm of Mind.”

Roland’s eyes went wide.

His body was in Neverwinter. His mind was here, thousands of miles north, at the very edge of the continent, in the place the demons occupied and no human army had reached.

He was already there.

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