Rewrite That Witch
CH359 · Rewrite
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Chapter 359: Different Choices

The fire dipped, then steadied, as Nightingale materialized beside it and fed in a new length of wood. The flames caught, and crackling filled the silence.

Roland watched the shadow of his cup stretch across the desk and exhaled.

Tilly had left some time ago. He kept returning to the conversation, turning it over for a loose thread he might have missed, some approach that would have changed the outcome — but there was none. Trust was a slow thing. You couldn’t manufacture it in an evening.

“It seems there are limits to what you can do,” Nightingale said. She dusted her hands and settled into her usual place on the window ledge.

“I told her a white lie.” He leaned back in the chair. “It’s completely natural that she doesn’t believe it.” He turned the thought over. “If you had a younger brother — and he suddenly became a different person, and kept insisting he was still himself — would you believe him?”

“That brother of mine who looked innocent and then stabbed me in the back?” She tilted her mouth. “He might as well have been a stranger. A mutation.”

“I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m not part of the Gelan family anymore. They’re just people I used to know.” She said it the way she said most things — lightly, without inviting examination.

“Tilly and I were strangers once, too,” Roland said. “Or worse — I didn’t get on with anyone in the palace. Not really.”

“If you want to talk about it, I’m not going anywhere.” Nightingale’s expression carried the faintest hint of something that was not entirely sympathy. “I’ve always been curious about what court life looked like. Especially the part where you became famous for all the wrong reasons, even out in Silver City.”

“To be honest, I was considerably worse then than I am now.” He couldn’t quite stop a smile. He reached into his memories and picked out a few stories that wouldn’t do too much damage to whatever remained of his dignity. He mentioned, briefly, the incident with the glass slag. “Probably from that moment on, she decided she hated me.”

“That is…” Nightingale clicked her tongue. “That really is terrible.” She let a moment pass. “But I don’t think she hates you now.”

“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow. “How would you know?”

“Because she said — ‘personally, I want to stay here and learn.’ Didn’t she?” Nightingale’s impression of Tilly’s measured tone was surprisingly accurate. “That sounded like a consolation. But she wasn’t lying. If she still hated you the way she did before, she wouldn’t have the faintest desire to stay.”

“Is that you comforting me?”

“It’s me telling you what I observed.” She shrugged. “And for what it’s worth, I think the current arrangement is fine.”

“Why?”

“She’s promised to prioritize sending witches to the town to fight demons alongside you. Whether she lives here permanently changes nothing practical. And if all the witches from Sleeping Island moved here at once —” she paused to toss a dried fish into her mouth — “with more people like Ashes, I’d have considerably more to manage.”

Roland laughed despite himself. “So you’ve had difficulties with Ashes before?”

“Difficulties?” Nightingale waved a hand. “Of course not. I simply keep an eye on her occasionally, to make sure there are no problems with Witch Union relations.”

“Is that right.”

She turned her head toward the window and began to whistle.

Roland watched her for a moment. “I might be imagining it — but you seem considerably happier since Tilly turned me down.”

“That’s your imagination,” she said firmly, and looked toward the door. “Someone’s coming.” She vanished.

Convenient escape, he thought. Then the knock came, and he straightened, reaching to replace the candle.

“Come in.”

The door opened.

Agatha.

He hadn’t expected that. It was near midnight. “Is something wrong?”

She didn’t answer immediately. She crossed to the round stool beside the desk and sat, as though she had rehearsed this and was following through before the nerve left her. “Ms. Wendy told me the flintlock capable of defeating Extraordinaries and the cannon with the astonishing range were both your ideas. That the principles behind them, and the manufacturing methods, are all recorded in books you wrote. Is that true?”

“You mean Natural Science Theoretical Foundation and Elementary Chemistry? The relevant theories are in both. The manufacturing methods aren’t — they were too detailed for what were meant to be elementary textbooks.” He paused. “Is that what brought you here?”

“Only members of the Witch Union can study those texts, correct?” She wasn’t deflecting — she was building toward something, and she knew where it ended before she said it. “Then I’m applying to join the Witch Union.”

“The Witch Union belongs to Border Town.” He was careful, measured. “Are you certain you want to work for a border town? Its lord is not a Transcendent. Just an ordinary mortal.”

“Any mortal who can create weapons against demons is not ordinary in any way that matters.” She was equally careful, measuring each word. “Even in the Quest Society, there would be a place for someone like you.” A pause. “As long as it causes no harm to witches and doesn’t require action against the survivors of the Union — I don’t mind… cooperating with a mortal.”

She had almost said working for. The substitution was precise and deliberate, and it told him more about what this had cost her than any explanation could. He kept his face neutral.

Her capacity to adapt — for someone who had been frozen for four centuries, waking into an entirely different world — continued to impress him. Something in her was built for the shock of new information.

“I thought you might follow Tilly to Sleeping Island,” he said. “It’s a city built and run by witches.”

“It’s a refuge from the Church’s hunts.” She shook her head. “I spoke with them before I made this decision. I’ve seen cities ruled by witches — many of them, before I was frozen. Every one is gone without a trace. Hiding from the Church serves no purpose if we can’t defeat the demons. I came here because I wanted to see whether there was hope of victory.” She met his eyes. “I want to see it here.”

“You will,” he said. Then, after a moment: “But as for acting against the Union — I can’t promise that. Because I don’t believe the Union is gone. I believe it changed its name and went underground.”

Her expression sharpened. “What?”

“Think about what you told me. Even after Taquila fell, Transcendents and Blessed Warriors survived. They didn’t simply vanish. And on an inhabited land, a group like that doesn’t go extinct — not unless they choose to.” He said it quietly, following the logic to its end. “The Church is probably a transformation of the Union. It wasn’t ordinary mortals who took control of the God’s Punishment Army’s creation methods — it was witches who did it themselves, and turned the Union into an instrument for hunting their own kind. The most efficient path to producing a large number of God’s Punishment Warriors.”

The silence was a long one.

“You’re saying it was the Union that created the world where witches are hunted?” Her voice had gone very still.

“It’s a hypothesis, not a conclusion.” He stood and crossed to the bookcase, pulling out several thick volumes — the Church’s own chronicles and the historians’ accounts of the Four Kingdoms — and set them on the desk in front of her. “The sources are here if you want to trace the chronology yourself. Either way, the Church is our enemy, and will need to be destroyed.” He looked at her. “If you choose to stand with the witches and fight the demons alongside us — you’re welcome in the Witch Union.”

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