Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 1479: A Marvel

The sixth day of Roland’s coma.

Anna came into the room and found Wendy tending to him.

“Let me.”

She took the cup of clear water and went to the bedside. She dampened a cotton swab and moistened Roland’s lips, careful and unhurried. The Seed of Symbiosis kept him alive, but his body still answered to other laws — without water, the lips cracked. They were cracking now.

In these six days, Anna had spent far less time at his side than Wendy, Nightingale, and the others. Not from any lack of desire. She had imposed a rule on herself: thirty minutes a day, no more. She was afraid that if she allowed herself more, she would not leave.

Wendy set down her work and gave Anna the space.

The thirty minutes were quiet, without pressure. Time itself seemed to slow.

The stillness broke when a report came from the guards outside.

“Your Majesty Anna — the investigation team has returned. The others are waiting in the conference room.”

Anna’s hand stopped. Then she set down the porcelain cup, slowly.

“Anna…” Wendy spoke, worried.

“Don’t worry.” Anna raised her head. “I’m fine.”

In that moment Wendy saw it happen — the switch, immediate and complete. The eyes that had been soft and fixed on Roland turned clear and resolved, as though an entirely different person now occupied the same body.

Wendy had watched this girl grow at a pace that was sometimes difficult to follow. But then she remembered: Anna had always been the first in Border Town to understand what Roland was thinking, to grasp what he was attempting before anyone else could see the shape of it. She had been learning this particular lesson for years. And now, when the town was gone and what remained was something far larger, Anna was extending that same capacity to new and heavier terrain.

“Go and do what you must,” Wendy said gently.

Anna bowed slightly and left the chambers.

Long passageways and stairs. She paused outside the conference room doors. Three slow breaths. Then she pushed them open.

“Your Majesty!” Every person in the room rose and pressed a hand to their chest.

Anna returned the gesture without dismissing it. She understood what it meant — that the order in this room, the discipline in all these faces, had been built by every person present. She could not accept their deference without acknowledging that.

“Let us begin.”

“Yes, Your Majesty!” Morning Light replied.

The investigation team for Mist Island had consisted of Lightning, Maggie, and Sylvie. Working from what Hackzord had provided, Sylvie had confirmed the island’s position with certainty — though her power could not penetrate the illusion barrier around it, the structure stood out in the open ocean like a beacon, unmistakable even at distance.

Sylvie had also detected a dense field of magic power surrounding the island and the sea nearby. This was what had stopped the Exploration Group from pressing further.

The reason was not hard to understand. Beyond the frequent sea ghosts, Nest Mothers, and Blade Beasts, Sylvie had identified a handful of far larger entities — what demons called Mountain Devourers, most often evolved from Nest Mothers. They could not produce limbed beasts or blade beasts, but their bodies were encased in dense armor from end to end, and their enormous mouths — the size of a capstan — ground the land itself into usable terrain. They were the Sky-sea Realm’s primary instrument for reshaping a battlefield to suit itself.

The Sky-sea Realm had no intention of surrendering the Bottomless Land.

While the General Staff worked on countermeasures, the doors opened and Silent Disaster and Isabella walked in together. An unlikely pair under any circumstances — a senior demon lord and a Pure Witch of the former Church — and the room registered surprise on every face that saw them. Anyone who had not been told in advance would have needed a moment to process the sight.

Anna knew exactly how important their work had been.

Isabella smiled at her. “Your Majesty, the test succeeded.”

The tightness in Anna’s chest eased. The most difficult problem facing any engagement with the Sky-sea Realm was this: Blade Beasts were invisible to ordinary eyes. Transferring the witches defending the Western Region to the front would leave Neverwinter unguarded. The only reliable path was to give ordinary soldiers a way to see them — and the only senior demon capable of that was Primal Chaos, a lord evolved from an Eye Demon, who possessed the ability to see through any form of concealment. But his effective radius was limited, far below what a passive, all-encompassing view would require.

If Primal Chaos’s ability could be amplified, that might be the decisive breakthrough.

The suggestion had originally come from Hackzord, which had reminded Anna of Zero’s Infinite Sigil. The plan took shape in three parts: Silent Disaster to persuade Primal Chaos, Arrieta to supply high-grade magic stones, and Isabella to do the research. The unusual duo was the result.

Isabella’s portion had been the hardest. And she had cleared it.

The mood in the room lifted visibly.

They moved to logistics — and there, the uncertainty crept back.

“I hope Graycastle arrives in time,” Agatha said, studying the map of the Four Kingdoms.

“I trust Iron Axe and the others,” Anna replied.

Kingdom of Dawn. Coral Bay.

White leaned on his crutches and made his way up to the deck, moving carefully toward the bow of the Speedster — a two-masted high-speed sailboat, quick along coastlines but not designed for open-sea storms. Its primary virtue was cost: where sailboats had once run to several hundred gold royals, a Speedster now cost ninety-nine, and in Graycastle’s paper currency one received a further ten-percent discount on top of that.

“Hey, Boss!” The seamen loading cargo across the deck saluted him.

White nodded with satisfaction.

Hiring crew had once consumed a large share of any voyage’s expense. But as steam-powered vessels became more popular among merchants, the price of ordinary sailboats had dropped, and wages for experienced sailors had dropped with them. Steam-powered boats used no masts and required fewer hands — which rippled through the entire market.

He gazed out over the water, where cloud and sky met their own reflections, and listened to the seagulls. A coachman once, then master of a sailboat, with personal assets multiplied several times over. The work was still moving people from one place to another, and the employers were still from Neverwinter — but against where he had stood a year or two ago, it was transformation.

He had not forgotten the steam truck, either. He still intended to buy one. He had simply found that his ambitions kept expanding — more boats, more vehicles; why not an actual transport enterprise? Establish something that lasted.

“Boss, you’re comparing the hard times to the good ones again, aren’t you?” someone called.

The crew knew the pattern. When their captain got into a philosophical mood he could lecture for hours, and as listeners they at least got a break from work. So someone always offered him the opening.

“What are you saying — this is the experience of life. You lot are all still too young for it.” White gave the speaker a look. “I drove for the Countess before the Church hired me, then Graycastle hired me, and from all of that I built this family business. None of it was hard times. All of it was the foundation. You understand?”

“Yes, yes, yes — whatever you say!” The crew nodded in concert.

“I know you all just want to slack off.” White found a clean spot and sat. He patted the boards beside him. “Come here, all of you. I’m in a good mood today; listening to me for a while won’t kill you.”

Whistles sounded across the deck.

He didn’t take it personally. He was not a nobleman. If he had not made the right choice and followed the crowd to Neverwinter when it mattered, he could have easily ended up no better off than any one of them.

“Today, I’ll tell you about the King of Graycastle recapturing the Kingdom of Wolfheart.” He cast around for a moment, then launched in. He talked about soldiers standing in the rain who never fell. He talked about a noble diplomatic mission that collapsed at the first meeting. Mostly, though, he talked about the fleet.

“You have no idea how large it was. White masts, unbroken, from one horizon to the other — longer than the sea line itself. You could see it from a great distance and just stop in your tracks. No one could blame the Baron of Sedimentation Bay for surrendering to King Roland on the spot.”

“Was it really that big?”

“Bigger than what I just said, kid. That is the most magnificent thing I have ever seen in my life, and there is no amount of thinking that will let you picture it. Unless you see it with your own eyes, do not imagine for one second you can. And that chance is not coming again in the next decade.” White sat back, satisfied with himself.

“Erm… Boss. Have you ever seen a ship come up from under the water?”

“What kind of nonsense is that? I’m telling you about real things, not folk tales.”

“But there’s one right there. Across the dock. And it looks like there’s more than one…”

“Did you drink too much last night?” White stood and pushed through the crew gathered around him.

He looked out at the sea.

He stopped.

A colossal door had appeared above the water’s surface, tall as a building, wide as a district. And out of it came ships — flying the Graycastle banner, one after another, emerging like apparitions and sweeping past the Speedster from several hundred meters out, their wakes spreading across the bay in long white lines.

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