Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 695: The Encounter

How is this possible?

No. 76 stood on the rooftop with her arm extended, the ring held steady before her eye, and tried to account for what she was seeing.

The colorful Magic Stone responded to the fluctuation of magic power within a limited range — a hundred steps, in theory. She had raised the ring toward the castle on impulse, half-expecting nothing. The castle sat on its hilltop at a distance that should have put it outside the stone’s reach entirely.

She blinked. Lowered the ring. Raised it again.

The light remained. Not a trick of exhaustion. Not the afterimage of the snowstorm. Solid and present and — vast.

She reached inward for Pasha’s mind, the connection that persisted regardless of distance.

Pasha. Define the threshold. What exactly qualifies as the Chosen One?

The answer came back across the link with the patience of someone who had considered the question for centuries. The edge of the ring’s field. If the beam fills the entire visible area — if you cannot see where it ends — that one is the Chosen One we seek.

But Lady Eleanor’s beam only covered half the field. You said even she—

Even the Three Chiefs only approached that threshold. Hence the requirement is severe. But the Key is not strength of magic, nor fighting capacity. It is complexity — the depth of what the ability has become. This is why you must examine every witch individually. Even we could not predict who would possess it.

No. 76 looked at the ring in her hand.

The beam in its field had no edge she could find. By shifting the ring laterally — by sweeping it slowly across the sky — she could map portions of the vast flat wall of light. It extended beyond the stone’s frame in every direction she tried.

She hadn’t seen Eleanor’s beam. She had read the records, studied the accounts, committed the scale of what the Three Chiefs had demonstrated to memory. Those accounts described the summit of what the Union had ever produced.

What she was seeing now did not describe a summit. It described something above the map entirely.

Lady Natalyae.

The connection opened.

I’ve found the Chosen One.

A pause. Then, across the link — quietly, with the weight of something long anticipated finally arriving: Deities finally smile on us.

Lady Alice. Lady Natalyae. You were right.

No. 76 stood in the snow and stared at the light until the ring’s warmth steadied in her palm and her hand remembered how to be still.

Roland was yawning when he came into the bathroom and found Zero already at the sink.

“The toothpaste—”

“Here.” She shifted slightly and extended the tube without looking at him. Nearly empty. He made a note to replace it.

He filled a glass, worked the brush around his teeth, and caught sight of the two of them in the mirror — his own height and Zero’s lack of it, both occupied with the same elbow motion at the same cramped sink. The symmetry of it struck him as genuinely funny.

Zero spat foam and gave him a look in the mirror. “What are you sneering at?”

“You’re a shorty,” he said, muffled by toothbrush.

The kick landed on his calf with precision.

“Shave,” she said, pulling her white hair back and beginning to tie it. “You look ragged. Don’t embarrass me.”

“It’s a parents’ meeting,” he said, rinsing. “I’m your guardian, not your father. No one expects me to—”

“Shave.”

He looked at his reflection. Fair point, probably.

“For what it’s worth,” he added, watching her work with the ribbons, “hair down suits you better. But if you’re set on tying it, twin tails would look better than a ponytail.”

“None of your business!”

The bathroom door closed in his face with a firmness that stopped just short of a slam.

Her temper has gotten worse since summer, Roland thought, finding his razor. Am I indulging her too much?

Probably. He kept doing it anyway.

The Dream World had become more legible to him over time. He had worked out the mechanism: it responded to intention. If he didn’t reach for it, it didn’t come. Sleep was simply sleep. But when he turned his attention toward the strange interior space that Zero’s memory had opened, the door was there.

Over the past two months he had mapped what he could. The Holy City of Hermes, partially intact in the memory fragment, had yielded materials on Magic Stones and secret history that he was still processing — records stored in the Pivotal Secret Temple, accessible via the underground caves beneath the cathedral. He had found the entrance to the old Holy City’s passage, followed it inward, and hit the boundary: the road ended in darkness threaded with scarlet lightning, as though the void had consumed everything beyond. Zero’s resistance during defeat had preserved only a portion of the fragment, and that portion had its walls.

He had also spent time in libraries. Half-remembered books he’d read in his previous life — finding the right editions, cross-checking editions, buying things in the market of the memory world. The armor from the Holy City ruins had moved quickly at good prices. He’d used the proceeds to replace the ancient air conditioner, upgrade the refrigerator, and generally make the apartment livable. Small improvements. The kind of incremental quality-of-life adjustments he’d been unable to afford at the start.

The photos were a complication he hadn’t anticipated. Someone had caught him on camera during the incident on the street — not clearly, his face unidentifiable, but the vest and shorts had become an internet curiosity for a brief interval. Who is this extremely athletic man dressed like he lost a bet? Something along those lines. He’d discarded the clothes, gone low for a few weeks, and the cycle of attention had moved on. Zero apparently hadn’t connected him to it.

Now that basic survival wasn’t consuming all his attention, he had started to think about his neighbors. Whether other doors existed in the building, opening into other fragments. Whether there was a practical method of finding out that didn’t involve breaking and entering.

Paying them, was the answer he kept arriving at.

“I’m ready, uncle.”

Zero emerged from the bathroom in a black short-sleeved shirt, a short pleated skirt, white stockings, sneakers. Her white hair was tied in twin tails at her shoulders, yellow ribbons at each one. Her lineaments were precise; her skin had the quality of something made rather than grown; her light red pupils, in the morning light, looked almost amber.

Roland reached out and rubbed her head.

“That’s right.”

She pulled back slightly, maintaining posture. “I happened to want to try this style. It has nothing to do with what you said.”

“I know.”

“It’s true.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”

“Then why do I feel like you’re lying?”

“You think too much,” he said, keeping his expression serious while something else ran underneath it. “Come on. Early bus.”

The parents’ meeting was in the back of the classroom, the students arrayed at the front to deliver their term goals and guarantees to the assembled adults. Roland had done this sort of thing before — sat in hard chairs with nowhere to put his elbows, listened to children announce intentions they meant completely and would remember intermittently. It had a reliable, almost comforting predictability.

He had expected a quiet morning.

The voice that came from his left was crisp and faintly amused and immediately recognizable.

“Why is it you again?”

He turned.

Garcia was sitting beside him.

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