Chapter 949: The Future of Witches
The new Sleeping Spell was not a building. It was a neighborhood.
Nearly seven thousand square meters of frame construction — four-story concrete-poured houses, the technology fully tested, using the same interior plan as the Witch Building. The roads had water and heat. In the middle of the residential cluster stood a two-story conference hall, built specifically to give the Sleeping Island witches a space for organizing their own gatherings. The welcome banquet had been held there on their first night in Neverwinter. Now, half a month later, the hall was full again.
Tilly stood at the podium. The room was quiet in the particular way that rooms go quiet when the person speaking has everyone’s attention before she opens her mouth.
She read out the recruitment order from Roland Wimbledon and the details of the new salary system.
“Thirty percent of the revenue generated by your work will go to the Sleeping Spell. That money will expand the district, improve conditions here, cover what the community needs.” She spoke with the easy energy of someone who had done the math and liked what it showed. “Your first thought might be that my brother has undercut me — we pooled all income on Sleeping Island too, after all. But there’s a difference. On the island, the merchants attached conditions: grain purchased at their prices, goods purchased at their prices, the commission effectively clawed back from underneath. Here, there are no strings. The amount Roland is offering will exceed what we actually cleared on the island, for work that requires only magic and carries none of the danger.”
Soft laughter moved through the room.
“But there’s more I haven’t mentioned yet.” Tilly let her voice sharpen slightly. “On the island, however much we earned, it went into the pool and came out as bread and cotton. You never held it in your hands. Now you will. And you’ll decide how it’s used.” She looked out across the rows of watching faces. “Open the envelopes on your tables.”
Molly had been watching the envelope marked with the Graycastle High Tower seal since she sat down. She’d left it untouched, waiting, though she wasn’t sure why — some instinct that this moment deserved to be held properly. She tore it open the moment Lady Tilly spoke.
“Is this… Gwent?” Shadow leaned over from the next chair. “The card game?”
“Look at yours.” Molly tilted her body to block Shadow’s line of sight.
“Fine.”
Inside the envelope was a single sheet of paper — palm-sized, impossibly glossy on one face and subtly uneven beneath her fingers. It bent easily without creasing the way ordinary paper did, which was the first thing she noticed. The second thing was that it was beautiful. Not decorated-beautiful, not in the way expensive cloth was beautiful — but made-beautiful, as if every element of it had been considered.
The front bore the High Tower and Spears emblem of Graycastle. The back showed a mountain rising toward a rising sun. Below each image, small and precise: Issued by the Graycastle Royalty and For exclusive use by witches. At the four corners, three numerals — each a “10” — and a symbol she didn’t recognize.
When she rotated it slightly, the patterns caught the light and turned gold. Not printed gold. Actual shimmer, as though threads of metal had been woven invisibly into the surface.
“It isn’t a Gwent card,” Shadow said, already holding her own up to examine it. “The numbers on the Gwent cards are all on the same side.”
“Is it a gift from His Majesty Roland?”
“Lady Tilly said it’s a reward—”
“Mine looks the same as yours.” Orbit had come over from across the hall. She held hers alongside Molly’s in comparison.
“What does the symbol mean?”
“I’ve seen it somewhere. I think.”
“Maybe it means ten royals?”
The room buzzed. The witches turned the papers over, compared them, angled them for the light. Several had clearly never seen anything printed to this level of precision and couldn’t stop looking.
Lady Tilly waited. When the noise began to settle, she resumed.
“What you’re holding is called a note. It functions as currency — like coins, but made of paper. The difference is that this kind is issued only to witches and can only be spent by witches.”
“It’s a paper gold royal?” someone asked from the back.
“You could think of it that way. But it can buy things that gold royals can’t.” Tilly nodded. “The ten-yuan note in your hand is good for one full bottle of Chaos Drink, or five servings of strawberry ice cream, at the shops in the Castle District.”
Molly’s mouth watered before she’d finished processing the words.
She still thought about the welcome banquet. Most of it — the sheer variety of it — had been unlike anything she’d imagined food could be. But the ice cream had been the thing she kept returning to. The color of it. The texture that was somehow both dense and yielding. The flavor that seemed to encompass every version of sweetness she’d ever tried and then exceed them without effort. She’d eaten the one serving she was given and spent the rest of the evening not thinking about asking for more. She’d thought about it almost every day since.
Five of those. For one piece of paper.
The hall’s energy was rising around her, and she wasn’t immune to it.
“There will be more than food available,” Tilly continued. “Clothing, daily goods — every new product made in Neverwinter will be available in Castle District shops to note-holders before anywhere else.” She spoke over the growing murmur with practiced ease. “Notes are your compensation for joining the recruitment drive. The more hours you work, the more you receive. But I want to be direct about one thing: this is not a requirement. It isn’t a necessity. Those who choose not to work will still be well provided for — that won’t change. Think of notes as an additional quality of life, not a baseline. The choice is yours individually.”
The room didn’t break into noise after she finished. The witches kept their attention on her. Something in her posture said she wasn’t done.
“But this isn’t only about enjoyment.” Tilly’s tone settled into something quieter and more careful. “Do you remember what you thought when you first awakened? What most of you wanted, more than anything — just a place where witches could live alongside ordinary people without being hunted. Just that.”
She let it land.
“This is bigger than food and nice things. Every note you earn is evidence. Evidence that witches are not a burden, not a threat, not something to be destroyed — but an indispensable part of what makes this city function. Every hour you work is another argument in our favor, made in a language everyone understands.” Her right fist closed at her side. “So: sisters who accept recruitment — please come forward now.”
“Sixty-nine responses out of eighty-six positions.” Tilly passed the name list to Wendy after the hall had emptied. “A solid result. And most of the non-responses are hesitation, not refusal — I’d expect more will come forward over time.”
“Solid?” Wendy’s laugh was a short, bright thing. “Your Majesty estimated thirty.”
Tilly’s expression shifted. Something precise and slightly aggrieved entered it. “He underestimates the Sleeping Spell.”
“More accurate to say,” Wendy said, dropping her smile and bowing with real sincerity, “that you deserve the credit. Your Highness, that last part wasn’t necessary for a recruitment speech — but it’s why sixty-nine people walked up instead of thirty.”
The things that witches most needed, alongside a stable home, were recognition and proof that their existence mattered. Wendy knew this from ten years of being the person her sisters came to when they were frightened or alone. She knew it the way you know things you’ve never had to read in a book.
“I meant it for my own sake too.” Tilly shook her head, a small dismissal. “Roland has shown me what this city can be. If we lose the Battle of Divine Will, all of it disappears. The best strategy before the doomsday winter arrives is to keep warm together.” She paused. “It’s also just wise.”
Wendy smiled. “Your Highness is right.”
“Unfortunately, not everyone agrees.” Tilly’s shoulders lifted, a small shrug. “The Eastern Region witches may never come around.”
“You mean Azima’s group?” Wendy’s brow creased. “If she doesn’t get along with you — why did she come to the Fjords with you at all?”
“It wasn’t always like this.” Tilly exhaled. “Before they arrived on Sleeping Island, they’d built up a relationship with the Bloodfang Association. Heidi Morgan helped them multiple times when the Church was pursuing them — real help, the kind that builds trust you don’t let go of easily. They came to Sleeping Island already bound to Heidi. For a while that was manageable. But when tensions escalated between Bloodfang and the Sleeping Spell—”
“And then you fought Heidi without warning them first.”
“Yes.” The word had the particular weight of an answer that is also an acknowledgment of cost. “I’ve accepted that I made things worse by how I handled it. I agreed when Azima asked to leave on the Sleeping Beauty — it seemed like the simplest resolution.” Tilly folded her hands. “If Scroll hadn’t persuaded them to stay in Neverwinter, they’d already be gone.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Wendy said. “Heidi deceived the Wolfheart witches.”
“She also helped Azima when no one else would.” Tilly said it without the energy of someone who wanted to keep discussing it. “If I’d been in that position, I’d probably feel the same way she does. They’re not bad people.”
Wendy was quiet for a moment. “I may have a way of reaching them. But it might mean they separate from the Sleeping Spell entirely.”
“That’s not so different from the situation now.” Tilly answered without hesitation or apparent misgiving. “If your approach benefits Roland and benefits them, do it.”
“Is this…” Doris set her hands flat on the table as they walked back into their building, the worry in her voice already spreading to the women behind her. “Is this really all right? We’ve already offended Lady Tilly. If we refuse His Majesty’s recruitment on top of that…”
This produced immediate, overlapping agreement. The arguments came from several corners at once:
“Roland Wimbledon is King of Graycastle. If we go back to the Eastern Region, we’d still be living under his rule.”
“And we’re not combat witches. If they decide to use force, we can’t stop them.”
“Don’t be naive. Could any of us actually fight Ashes? She’s hated us since we arrived.”
“Honestly, the Witch Union has treated us well.”
“Because they’re waiting. As soon as His Majesty gives the word—”
“Enough.” Azima’s voice was not raised. It didn’t need to be. The room went still. “Roland Wimbledon won’t use hard methods. He’s spent too long building his reputation for that — one coerced witch would unravel too much. If we accept recruitment now, everything we held out for means nothing. We’d be absorbed into the Sleeping Spell regardless of what we wanted. From outside, we’d look like every other group that capitulated.”
She said it with conviction. She also knew, somewhere quiet and honest in herself, that the past two weeks had not been what she’d prepared for. The Witch Union had not treated them as threats or obstacles. The witch called Wendy had come multiple times — not to pressure, to talk — and had somehow managed to make those conversations feel like something other than negotiation. Azima had felt, more than once, the particular warmth of being treated as a peer by someone who didn’t need anything from her.
That was the problem. Once you felt that, it became harder to hold the wall.
She told herself she was still holding it.
A knock at the outer door.
“Who’s there?” The edge in her voice was reflexive.
“It’s Wendy.” The voice from outside was familiar — easy, calm, the same as it always was. “Miss Azima, I have something I’d like to discuss with you.”