Rewrite That Witch
CH375 · Rewrite
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Chapter 375: Last Wish

Ferlin knew the basement.

As a boy he had treated it as his private territory—had spent hours dragging open dusty crates, cataloguing strange objects, inventing histories for them. His father had beaten him for it repeatedly, then finally banned him from entering alone. He had always found a way back in.

Now Sir Eltek led him past the familiar corridor and through a door he had never opened. The stone room beyond was small and sealed. Its four walls were embedded with crystals the size of a man’s fist, pale blue, set in regular intervals into the masonry. Ferlin drew a sharp breath. As a child he hadn’t understood what he was looking at. Now he did: God’s Stones of Retaliation, every one of them high quality, and every one of them large enough to be worth five or six hundred gold royals at minimum.

Is the Eltek family actually this wealthy?

And then he remembered the treasure map. That, too, had come from this house.

A ring of boxes occupied the center of the room, arranged the way he dimly recalled from childhood expeditions. Sir Eltek produced a ring of keys from his coat, selected one, and worked it into the largest box in the circle. The lid opened with a long groan and a release of dust.

Ferlin held his breath and looked inside. The interior was divided into layers, like the dressing cases of young noblewomen, and each layer held gemstones in different colors.

“Which ancestor passed this down?”

“I haven’t been here in a very long time.” Sir Eltek sighed. “Every time I see these magic stones, I remember what my ancestors told me.” He touched the edge of one layer gently, almost reluctantly. “These are treasures that only witches can use. Our family’s history is bound up in this—the Elteks were founded under the protection of a witch.”

His father’s account was longer and stranger than anything Ferlin had been told as a child.

The first Eltek ancestor had not come from the Western Region at all. He had come from the Barbarian Lands beyond the Impassable Mountain Range. What Ferlin had understood as myth—the blue-haired figure watching from the highest position on the portrait wall—turned out to be the load-bearing fact of everything.

“The family’s founder—Ancestor Elsa—once built a great kingdom together with other witches,” Sir Eltek said. “The witches formed the ruling class, something like today’s nobility. It was a demon offensive that destroyed it. In the final battle, the survivors scattered in every direction. Elsa led one group toward a stone tower in the Misty Forest, to retrieve experimental materials. Another group followed the refugees east toward what is now Graycastle—barren land in those days, not yet a kingdom.”

“Were our ancestors with the second group?” Ferlin asked. His voice came out rougher than he intended.

“Yes. The first Eltek was Elsa’s housekeeper—the person she trusted above all others outside her kin. He should have gone with her into the forest. Instead, he proposed that he stay behind to guard the materials.” Sir Eltek’s voice did not waver. “She accepted. But a housekeeper does not propose to separate from his master unless he wishes not to follow her. The acceptance changes nothing about what the proposal meant.”

Ferlin said nothing. He understood.

“When he settled in the Western Region, remorse followed him the rest of his life. He set it all down in a book.” Sir Eltek crossed to another box, lifted the lid, and drew out a volume with a black cover, worn smooth with age. He held it out to Ferlin. “Elsa never returned from the forest. He eventually broke from the refugee camp and brought his servants here, to this land that had never been cultivated, and built the estate on it.”

Ferlin took the book but did not open it. His mind had already caught on something. “So you knew, from the beginning, that everything the Church preached about witches was wrong.”

If witches had once stood against demons—had fought and died in that resistance—why were they now marked as servants of Hell?

“I knew.” Sir Eltek’s answer was level, without apology. “And I could do nothing. If a witch were found in our territory, I would have hidden her. But in the Stronghold, under Duke Ryan, that was impossible. He despised witches even more than the Church did.” He spread his hands. “The ancestors who came after the first did the same thing I did. They hid what they could, when they could. None of them ever told the survivors what had happened in the witches’ kingdom.”

“Are any survivors still alive? In the household?”

“Dead, all of them. Long dead.” He said it without sentiment. “Even with long lives, they were human. They aged and passed on.”

“But you believe the founder could still be living.”

“It was a working possibility—witches have many abilities, and among their characteristics is that they cannot have children. That was my reasoning.” His father paused. “I didn’t say it was certainty.”

Ferlin opened the book.

The first page held weight even before he could read it clearly. The handwriting was precise and even, the hand of someone trained to record things carefully, but between every line lay something that precision could not contain. The ink in many passages had faded to near-illegibility, which somehow made the feeling press harder through the gaps. He read slowly. He turned pages.

At the end, he found the wills.

They read less like legal documents than like unfulfilled wishes written by someone who had accepted they would remain wishes. His father had been drunk the night he alluded to them. Ferlin understood why now.

As a former knight, I can empathize with this.

“Do you need me to find her?” he asked, after the room had been quiet a while. “If she is Elsa, she must be living in the prince’s castle—as far as I know, many witches have gathered there.”

“Witches gathered in the castle.” His father sat with it. “That would explain why Longsong Stronghold posted a witch recruitment notice last week. His Highness intends to make an enemy of the Church.” He shook his head. “No. You don’t have to find her.”

Ferlin looked up. “You don’t want to see her?”

“It would be wrong for the descendants to go looking, as though receiving a visit.” Sir Eltek laughed, a short and genuine sound. “We should be the ones to go to her.”

“We?”

“I’m coming with you to Border Town.” His father stroked his chin. “Bring everything in this room. If she truly is Elsa, our ancestors’ last wish may finally be fulfilled.”

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