The rift crackled like a bonfire fed with wet wood, spitting purple sparks across the moss-covered stones. Elric pressed his palm against the nearest pillar—carved elven work, smooth as glass despite centuries of mountain weather—and felt the chaotic energies pulse through the ancient marble like a fever through flesh.
"Hold," he murmured, weaving his fingers through the complex tri-glyph sequence his mother had died trying to teach him. The air tasted of copper and ozone.
His Griffin medallion vibrated against his chest, a steady thrum that matched the rhythm of his enhanced Yrden. Three weeks he'd been working to stabilize this tear in reality, three weeks of sleepless nights and burned fingertips. The rift had grown from the size of a dinner plate to something a man could step through sideways. Something would step through, if he failed.
Blue light crawled up his arms as he channeled power into the binding sigils. The elven ruins of Tir Tochair—his namesake, the place that had claimed him as surely as any Trial of Grasses—responded with their own pale glow. Ancient magic recognized ancient magic, even when filtered through Witcher mutations and twenty-eight years of stubborn experimentation.
The rift shuddered. Contracted. For a heartbeat, Elric thought he'd finally mastered it.
Then his medallion began humming.
Not the steady vibration of proximity to magic—this was different. Erratic. Like a dying insect's wing beats. In five years of wearing the thing, since old Coën had pressed it into his hands with his dying breath, it had never made that sound.
The tri-glyph wavered. Elric gritted his teeth and poured more power into the binding, sweat beading on his forehead despite the mountain cold. The rift pulsed once, twice—
And sealed.
The sudden silence hit him like a slap. No crackling energy, no whisper of otherworldly wind through the tear. Just autumn air and the distant cry of a hawk somewhere above the ruins.
Elric sagged against the pillar, his enhanced amber eyes tracking over the spot where the rift had been. Scorch marks on the stone. A faint shimmer in the air that would fade by sunset. Nothing more.
His breathing steadied. His medallion's humming did not.
"What in the abyss—"
The raven landed on the broken archway with the lazy confidence of a bird that had flown too many miles to be startled by mere Witchers. Black as spilled ink, larger than most of its kind, with intelligent eyes that fixed on Elric like a merchant appraising goods.
A message cylinder gleamed silver on its leg.
Elric pushed away from the pillar, joints protesting after hours of precise spellwork. The raven didn't move as he approached, merely tilted its head and extended the leg bearing the cylinder.
"Polite, aren't you?" Elric worked the cylinder free with careful fingers. The raven preened once and took flight, disappearing over the peaks without ceremony.
The wax seal bore the wolf's head sigil of Kaer Morhen.
Elric cracked it with his thumbnail, unrolled the parchment, and read Vesemir's familiar script:
Ancient disturbances threaten the keep. Your expertise with Elder magic is needed. Come at once.
—V
Elric read it twice. Vesemir wasn't given to dramatics or unnecessary summons. If the old Wolf was calling for help, especially from a Griffin...
The medallion's humming intensified.
Elric pressed his free hand to the silver griffin at his throat. The vibration traveled up his arm, settled in his bones like an ache before a storm. He'd modified his Signs, enhanced them beyond anything the old Griffin masters had achieved, but the medallion's behavior made no sense. Medallions reacted to magic, not—
Not whatever this was.
He folded the message and tucked it inside his robes, then gathered his few possessions from the camp he'd made among the ruins. Bedroll, travel rations, his twin swords, and the leather satchel containing his research notes. Everything a Witcher needed to disappear into the world again.
The ruins watched him prepare to leave with the patience of stone. Tir Tochair had stood here when the elves still walked these mountains in numbers, when magic flowed as freely as water from the peaks. Now it was just another relic of a dying age, beautiful and useless.
Like the Griffin School itself.
Elric slung his pack and checked the leather bindings on his sword grips. The steel blade—Verdict, he'd named it years ago—sat comfortable on his left hip. The silver sword rode his back, its runes still warm from channeling power through the tri-glyph.
The medallion hummed.
"I hear you," he said to the empty air. "Whatever you're trying to tell me, I hear you."
But the griffin pendant offered no wisdom, only that strange, erratic vibration that seemed to pull him north. Toward Kaer Morhen. Toward whatever ancient disturbances had driven Vesemir to write such a terse summons.
Elric took a last look at the sealed rift, at the elven stones that had shaped his understanding of magic, at the place he'd called home for longer than anywhere else. Then he turned his back on Tir Tochair and began the long walk north, his medallion humming its discordant song with every step.
The path down from the ruins wound through stands of pine and over streams gone shallow with autumn's grip. He'd walked this route dozens of times, but today it felt different. Charged. As if the very air anticipated something approaching.
By the time the sun touched the western peaks, painting the sky the color of fresh blood, Elric had covered eight miles and his medallion's humming had never faltered.
Whatever waited at Kaer Morhen, it was calling to him as surely as the rift had called to his magic. The thought should have troubled him more than it did.
Instead, Elric found himself walking faster.