Chapter 390: Winter
After Paper finished washing up, she wrung her towel and hung it on the snow-covered balcony.
Left outside for a day, it would freeze solid. When she needed it again, she would knead and pat it until the ice crumbled free. She could have stayed inside and used her magic power to vaporize the moisture instead — it would have been warmer and faster — but that would reduce her practice count for the day.
Her magic power capacity was considered one of the lowest among all the witches she had met. Every drop of it had to count.
She had barely finished hanging the towel when someone knocked.
Almost every morning at this hour, big sister Wendy came to bring her to the castle hall for breakfast. Paper called out and opened the door cheerfully.
Wendy stood in the doorway. She pulled Paper into a hug and sniffed at her cheeks the way she always did — apparently checking something, though Paper had never asked what.
“Excellent. You’ve already cleaned up.”
Paper grinned and took Wendy’s hand, and they walked toward the hall together.
It had been nearly half a month since she arrived in Border Town. The shape of days here had become familiar, which seemed remarkable to her — that something so foreign could settle into habit so quickly.
Here, she did not have to leave her shack before sunrise to find food. She did not have to worry that firewood she gathered would be gone by the time she returned. The hours she had once spent on survival were now practice and study. She had imagined a life like this in the slums, lying awake at night and talking with the other children — a life with no fear of going hungry, with warmth on demand, the kind of life reserved for the wives and daughters of great nobles. She had imagined it the way you imagine things that will never happen to you.
Wendy’s hand was soft and warm. Paper had never touched a hand that felt like that in the slums. There were people here who simply — loved her. Cared about her, for no reason that she had earned yet. She hoped very much that she would never have to leave.
If this is a dream, I would rather not wake up.
As they entered the hall, Paper saw that the witches weren’t sitting at the long table eating. They were clustered against one wall, exclaiming over something in turns, voices stacking on top of each other.
She looked at Wendy, too shy to ask.
“Our sisters are testing their fighting capacity,” Wendy said, laughing.
“Fighting capacity?” Paper had never heard the phrase. “What… is that?”
“Something invented by His Highness and his particular way of describing things. Don’t take the name too seriously.” Wendy bent, picked Paper up, and settled her onto her shoulder — from here, Paper could see over the heads of the assembled witches. “See that silver sheet of metal? It’s a relic from the witches’ kingdom, from more than four hundred years ago. Extraordinaries used it as a battle weapon. Only witches with strong magic power can draw out its ability. His Highness placed it in the hall so that everyone could test the level of their magic power — or, more honestly, to satisfy our sisters’ curiosity. Those who can illuminate all four Magic Stones on it in a single breath are said to have divinely willed fighting capacity.”
Paper’s head was swimming slightly. Witches’ kingdom. Extraordinaries. Magic Stones. Foreign words in every direction. But the sight in front of her needed no translation: witches stepping up one by one, pressing their hands against the metal plate, and the crystals embedded in it brightening in response — two, three, shades of color blooming in sequence like a kaleidoscope made of light.
“I can light two!” Lightning announced from somewhere in the crowd. She was about Paper’s age, with a stout dove perched on her shoulder — Maggie, whose witch form apparently lived in that small bird.
“Two and a half, coo!” Maggie chirped.
“Two and a half? That’s impossible!”
“Do you want to try?” Wendy asked, still laughing. Paper felt the vibration of it through her shoulder. “You won’t do very well right now — you haven’t learned to channel magic power into a stone yet, let alone activate a sigil. But His Highness has made it a required course, so you’ll be given a Stone of Light to practice with soon enough.”
“Will it be as clear and bright as those?” Paper looked at the crystals on the metal plate, which were glowing with a depth she had never seen from any lamp or candle.
“Come and find out.” Wendy set her down gently. Paper stood on her toes and craned to see.
She nodded, very firmly. “I’ll practice as hard as I can.”
“Good girl.” Wendy laughed again and rubbed Paper’s cheeks with both hands. “Eat first. You’ll need the energy.”
After her oatmeal, Paper went back to the Witch Tower and began her daily practice.
Wendy had explained it this way: everything in the world was made of tiny balls too small to see, and the changes that seemed like magic — melting, freezing, dissolving — were just those balls separating and bonding in different arrangements. A witch’s ability didn’t create these changes. It accelerated or guided them. Which meant that what Paper did wasn’t simply making things happen — it was speeding up processes that were happening anyway, invisibly, all around her.
She didn’t fully understand it yet. But she followed Wendy’s instruction precisely: find the magic power inside your body, and release it as evenly as possible. Steady, controlled, no rushing.
She understood one other thing clearly, from the years in the slums: the comfortable life she had now existed because His Highness needed what witches could do. That was her only real value. If she wanted to keep this life — and she wanted it fiercely, in a way she hadn’t let herself want anything since she was very small — she had to be useful. She had to work.
Then a twisting pain seized her abdomen.
Magic power surging inside her, vibrating against its containment — she heard herself groan before she could stop it.
“What’s wrong?” Wendy was at her side immediately.
“Nothing.” Paper shook her head, steadying her breath. “Just now — it felt like the magic power wanted to break free.”
“Break free…” Wendy’s expression shifted. Something moved behind her eyes that Paper couldn’t read. “Do you remember when you first became a witch?”
“It was winter, I think. I don’t remember the exact date.”
“Winter.” Wendy’s smile went away. “It’s the end of autumn now. Winter will arrive in a few days.” She was already moving toward the door, but she stopped and turned back. “Rest for now. I’ll find Nightingale — she can see changes in your body’s magic power directly.” A pause at the threshold. “Don’t worry. For a witch in Border Town, this is not a life-and-death matter.”
Wendy’s guess was confirmed three days later.
Paper lay in her large bed and looked at the circle of witches gathered around her. They talked over each other with reassurances, pressed her hands, hovered with the particular helpless energy of people who wanted to do something useful and couldn’t. She listened to all of it and felt, unexpectedly, the pressure of tears behind her eyes.
The memory of her first awakening — the sensation of being burned from inside by something she couldn’t name or escape — was still there. Here, it seemed smaller.
“Because your practice time is still short, the pain of the second awakening won’t necessarily pass completely.” Wendy sat at the edge of the bed and stroked Paper’s hair with slow, steady strokes. “But listen: don’t think about giving up. Don’t lose your sense of yourself.”
Paper nodded.
She didn’t trust herself to speak. The moment she opened her mouth, she thought she might cry loudly, and she would not do that — not here, not in front of everyone. In the slums, crying was the final flag of surrender. It was what you did when you had stopped.
She was not stopping.
She closed her eyes and waited.
When she opened them, the window held a sea of white.
The awakening had been gentler than expected. All the preparations the witches had organized — the remedies, the precautions — turned out to be unnecessary. She lay still for a moment and took stock of herself. Her magic power capacity felt larger, the way a room feels larger once you have moved furniture and can see the actual walls. Small changes registered throughout her body: her eyes could pick out details farther away, and her arms and legs felt solid in a way they hadn’t before.
She washed her face and was still drying her hands when Wendy knocked.
“Coming.” Paper opened the door and took Wendy’s hand.
This time Wendy did not lead her down to the hall and the long breakfast table. Instead they climbed to the third floor, to the Lord’s office.
The grey-haired man looked up from behind his desk. He smiled at her — the kind of unhurried smile that meant he had been expecting her — and held out a piece of parchment.
“From today, you are officially a member of the Witch Union.”