Rewrite That Witch
CH220 · Rewrite
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Chapter 220: Decomposition and Restoration

Early the next morning, Roland covered the office floor with objects.

He did it methodically: solid and liquid, mineral and ingot, inorganic and organic, edge cases at the far corners. The array stretched from one wall nearly to the desk. When he stepped back to look at it, Nightingale was already there, squatting by the meal tray in the corner, taking a steamed dumpling between two fingers and eating it in one bite.

“You’re in a good mood,” she observed.

“A new witch, and her ability is extraordinary.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Also—I saw that.”

“There are still some left.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Is Lucia’s ability actually that useful?”

“Enormously. Whether we’re looking at decomposition or restoration, either direction transforms what we can do in manufacturing and smelting.” He pulled out his chair, too energized to sit in it. “If she works alongside Anna—Anna creates precision parts to exact specification, Lucia breaks them back to source material when they degrade—we can cycle through alloys that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive. Even one or two bespoke machines built from high-strength steel would push the town’s production capacity past anything we could achieve with current methods.”

He was thinking about the cutting tools—Anna’s main limitation. The machines she built for Graycastle Industrial were technically sound but materially constrained: abrasion and deformation accumulated over months of use, blades cracking under load, components that should have lasted years surviving only one or two. Not for lack of design. For lack of material. If Lucia could return a spent tool to refined powder and separate its components cleanly enough, they could work with alloys currently beyond their refining capability.

“She doesn’t seem to think she’s useful,” Nightingale said.

“She hasn’t had a reason to think so yet. It’s the same situation Mystery Moon was in—the ability looks useless until you know enough to understand it. Once Lucia finishes Theoretical Foundations of Natural Science, she’ll see it differently.”

Nightingale put two dried fish in her mouth simultaneously and said nothing.

Lucia arrived after breakfast, looking like someone who had not slept well but had made peace with it.

The testing began.

Roland moved through the test objects in sequence, watching what Lucia’s ability produced and checking for consistency patterns. Iron ingots and raw iron ore both yielded a silver-white powder—but at the edges, under close examination, different secondary powders: the residue of different impurity profiles. Grapes and raw meat didn’t change at all. The steamed dumplings came apart into water, flour, and meat residue.

About halfway through the array, she stopped.

“I think I’ve—” She touched the edge of the next object and drew her hand back. “I’ve run out of magic. I’m sorry.”

Roland looked to Nightingale, who nodded confirmation. “Very small reserves. Like a thin cloud of drifting smoke—but the color is something I haven’t seen before.”

“What color?”

”…Grey.”

He sat back at his desk and waved Lucia over. “Magic capacity grows with age and practice. You’re not yet an adult—doing this much is genuinely impressive.” He pushed a prepared parchment across the surface. “Since you’ve decided to stay in Border Town, please sign this.”

Lucia read to the end of the contract. A sharp intake of breath. “A whole gold royal a month? Your Highness, my ability hasn’t been fully tested—”

“The amount has nothing to do with the extent of your ability,” Roland said. “Every member of the Witch Union receives this contract. The terms are always the same.”

“Even if the ability turns out to be useless?”

“You can read it that way if you like.” He spread his hands. “But I believe every witch’s power has a specific use waiting to be found—finding it is the work, not the proof of worth. There’s nothing to worry about on that front.” He let a pause settle the point, then continued: “You already know about the demonic bite from last night’s conversation. To make sure your Day of Awakening passes smoothly, you need to practice your ability daily. After dinner, Scroll runs lessons in the living room—attendance is required. Reading and writing you’ve already covered, but Primary Mathematics and Natural Foundation are the starting points here.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“You have a younger sister.” He was smiling now, slightly. “When you attend class, bring her. She’s the right age.”

Lucia looked up to confirm this wasn’t a joke.

Then she bowed—properly this time, the relief of someone who has been braced for a particular blow and discovered it isn’t coming. “As you say.”

After she left, Roland looked at the objects scattered across the floor.

“Well?” Nightingale settled on the corner of the desk.

“Remarkable.” He picked up the plate that had held the dumplings. The flour had returned to powder, the meat separated cleanly from it. He pressed a pinch of the flour between his fingers: silky, fine, smooth. “This shouldn’t be possible by any standard physics I know. When you knead flour and cook the dough, the gluten proteins denature—permanently. They cross-link under heat into a structure that is not reversible. Even if you grind the result back down, you don’t get the original flour. The molecular arrangement is altered in a way that’s considered irreversible.” He set the plate down. “Lucia reversed it.”

“So her ability is: restoration?” Nightingale tried the word.

“Not quite. Look at this—” He gestured at where the iron ingot had been. Silver-white powder, with separate residues at the edges. “If it were pure restoration, the iron ingot should have become iron ore. Instead it became iron powder and separated impurities. That’s not restoration—that’s something else.”

“Then what is it?”

Roland considered the question carefully. “I think there are two effects working together, and their expression depends on her knowledge and experience.”

“Knowledge and experience?”

“At the fundamental level, meat and iron ore aren’t different. Both are composed of the same basic particles arranged differently. But Lucia can break down iron ore and not meat. I think the reason is that she doesn’t yet understand organic compounds—the biochemistry of living material—well enough for her ability to have a model to work from.” He stopped. “That’s speculative. But what I’m confident about is this: what she needs most right now is knowledge. The ability will grow as the knowledge does.”

Nightingale ate another dried fish.

Three days later, the second convoy arrived from King’s City.

The same disease. Worse: nearly half the passengers infected. Roland questioned some of the patients and learned the spots had appeared on the first day of sailing—which meant exposure had happened before they boarded, and the incubation period had been shorter this time, which meant the parasite population in King’s City had grown or mutated or both.

Lily handled the treatment, again. The box was already built.

With the convoy came a letter from King’s City, sealed with Margaret’s emblem.

The Church had declared the disease a witch conspiracy. They had announced their Holy Elixir—a treatment only they could provide—and were already distributing it to the faithful. Outside King’s City, the illness was spreading into the surrounding region. Theo had halted further refugee shipments.

Roland did the arithmetic.

The first fleet would reach King’s City in four more days. The news it carried—that Border Town had cured the disease—would take another week to spread. By that point, many of the already-infected would be dead. The Church’s Elixir would look like the only thing that worked, and those who survived would be its creatures. Devoted. Grateful. Bound.

He sat at his desk for a long time after reading the letter.

I cannot let the Church claim this. Not this.

If the Church became the sole institution that could cure the plague—in practice or in the popular understanding—the eastern population would be theirs. Permanently. And there was nothing in the numbers or the timing that would fix this through ordinary means.

He made the decision before he finished the thought.

A small team. Lily, escorted. King’s City. Now, ahead of the returning fleet, before the Church’s narrative had time to harden into the only story anyone knew.

He started writing orders.

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