"I wish I could have taken you with me..."

Her whispers were the gentle touch of a halo. It rolled off the pained sweat beads, the nothingness and the ghosts of what he had and will never again feel. The memory of that feeling was distant, from another world that now, could not be glanced upon past the frozen horizon of Arcapan.

Sylvain had wished the ghost of his sister to have spared him the mercy of turning that senseless recovery into a more permanent deathbed. What wouldn't he give to have joined her and how much he envied his father for going away so soon, even if by the pains of a disease as disgusting as the one he earned and saw.

The whole kingdom felt like a plague, a gravestone for all tomorrows to come, all which now weighed down a legless head, a stone cold stature that would never stand, but only rise to expectations which no longer mattered to the people it once did.

Ever since the monster attack, fear cracked the skulls once wisely keeping the balance of Arcapan. Their resources ran out in under a year and after that, diseases crept into their secluded lives. One of them brought the Lord down seven feet beflow the wheels of his son.

Sylvain has changed, far beyond the invention of a chair on smaller carriage wheels that his mother could count as her most expensive accessory procured in times of crisis. Arcapan needed food, medicine, a new mage for the Keep perhaps too, but the mad Lady bought instead a chair from the nearest big kingdom who either way, despised them enough now not to bother giving aid.

They were going to let them die out.

He knew all those things because he sat on the reminder that he now had a duty, not to the letters in a stone that spelled the name of his father, but the name next to him: Azaras. He never should have lived and she should have been the iron gripped ruler of the city, or at least that was how Sylvain pinched himself with enough color to not die of broken heart.

"You should have taken me with you, to death," Sylvain mumbled.

Between him and the graves, one fresh and one covered in two years of moss and neglect, blew a chill. It had travelled from the white peaks of the mountains to check on the state of the kingdom living at its feet, only to find everything has remained frozen, if not just moving incredibly slow.

He gritted his teeth for two years, staring down at his sister's grave, imagining a funeral he has battled inhumane pain through, away, and could have never attended. It was absence which forced him to stay behind after the ceremony of his father's death, the final piece in an ironic puzzle which ended him in the one situation he did not wish to be.

Never too strong and swift to begin with, Sylvain has been made weak, alone and Lord of a dying keep, trapped to the lands to which he was born, lands which waited to claim him like he did half his family.

"Everyone would understand," Geoffrey dared, as much as his shivering voice could, to speak over Sylvain's terrifyingly numb ritual, "if you did not show up today for the council's meeting."

He had been ascended to a full fledged guard and personal carrier of Lord Sylvain, because while his secret lover laid in pain, he, not allowed to see him without raising suspicious eyes, fought harder in trainings than all the other few lads. Each shed of sorrow and aches he'd let go to waste by the blink of an eye and waste away his talent pushing a wheeled chair, if only it meant he'd be closer to the one he loved.

Only Sylvain was worrying him lately. The paths to the river were too danger for these thin wheels he was on, but every day down to the graveyard, he'd still demand going out. Same words, same gestures, and now they added a new family member of his.

Geoffrey glanced away in a fugitive sorrow. Far at the margin of the graveyard, he buried his old man alone, not too long after Sylvain has lost his legs.

"A good ruler does not place anyone or anything before the safety of his kingdom," Sylvain answered flatly. His eyelashes batted heavily over dark circled eyes. The wind tried to brush his curled her away, but it has become short and unmoving stone, since he had to cut it for the neglecting it endured during his recovery.

"My father was not a good ruler, but my sister would have been." There should have been some emotion there, but it was now. His back was straight and Geoffrey shivered alone in the cold. "To spite him, to honor her... I have to be better."

Seeing the dreamy boy haunted by the dead into taking the reins of the dying Arcapan, Geoffrey's heartstrings quivered into his tender voice. "You don't have to do this, Sylvain...," his fingers curled around the back of his wheeled chair.

"I'm your Lord now, Geoffrey." Colder than the mountains, than the stone and even than the graves, Sylvain raised his chin. "Address me accordingly. It would be a shame to lose your hard worked titles for so little."

Geoffrey wished to hold his hand, to his face into his hardened hands like they once did in their stolen moments in hay, but he feared this Sylvain who the beast left behind for him would sooner cut his hands off than allow some warmth back into his broken life. It tore him to see the damage of the creatures of darkness and the monsters they left behind.

"Did you throw away the stones as I instructed you?" Sylvain moved on towards one more inquiry which belonged to the stones of death, rather than the halls of the keep.

Geoffrey has been given a bag full of colorful pebbles. Little marbles, tumbled river stones, each in a different shade of the world. Sylvain handed the bag to him in the morning, right before the ceremony, and instructed him to go to the river and return the stones where they belong.

As proof of obedience, Geoffrey placed the empty bag into his Lord's hand.

Sylvain's pale, slender fingers arched down and gripped the single item that had been filled with joy, his last anchor and memory of regret, a barrier which needed to be vanquished and voided of importance, so he may now find the strength into the new world.

"Good." He let go of the bag and the mountain's winds blew it away for him. Geoffrey received the allowance nod of taking the wheeled chair around and back up the path climbing to the keep's castle.

The bag pierced a spike on the wild bushes behind Azaras gravestone, a piece of land where life lingered, be it in cobwebs, or vines and grass and moss. It fluttered in the wind and struggled to get free, but ultimately, it simply just remained stuck, to rumble in a sturdy formation.

Between the bottom of the keep and the tower of the council stood circling stairs to be climbed. Geoffrey carried Sylvain up the stairs in his arms, left him sitting on an old bench, just outside the heavy doors of the room with a balcony where all important decisions get discussed. Then he would return down the whole tower and climb again, to the Lord, with his chair, helping him back in, cleaning the dust of his shoulder pads, neating out the creases of his dark suit and spotless chain armour.

The heavy door opened for him and released the noise otherwise concealed from him. A council full of chatter fell silent all at once and everyone raised to their feet. The captain of the guards, Rodkah, an old man whi trained both Sylvain and Azaras, was first to bow his head. "My Lord."

He was also first to receive Sylvain's agressive flares of scoffs, "You started the meeting without me."

"With all due respect, my Lord," Hains, the treasurer whose coin has long depleted with its so obvious infautation for Sylvain's mother, bowed before him as a man with arthritis would, when under its sorrowful surface, he rejoiced the previous Lord had died. "We thought you would prefer mourning your departed father, at least today, as it is customary, for a week..."

"Arcapan does not have time to wait a week," Sylvain responded and nodded over his shoulder for Geoffrey to continue pushing his chair, all the way across the room. There, he stopped, removed the high chair that used to belong to his father, looking brand new since the last Lord scarcely joined the councils, then positioned Sylvian's rolling chair in its stead.

At the raise of the boy's hand, the council finally sat and Geoffrey stepped back, pushing his back far agains the wall, somehow a shadow fading in the background of the paleness of the new ruler left with a ruin to guide.

Sylvain carried on his lips ideas he now had the power to carry from the wisedom of her departed sister onto the high table and actually guarantee he will be listened to. When the untrustworthy councillors tried to take over, the boy, youngest in the room, surprised them by speaking up frank, slow and concealed of any emotion.

"We've been looking for help towards the wrong directions. Vespaden turned their backs on us and stopped our water supply on the premises we have carried diseases. Turn to the Withers of Kaer Morhen? In full spring our very warrior neighbors let our lands be swarmed with monsters unlike the world has ever seen."

"And what you'll have us do, my Lord?" The third councilmen, a representative of the commoners, the farmer Yven, who has been single handedly portioning and feeding the people or Arcapan, raised his eyes surprised perhaps to be understood with his frustration.

"They made themselves our enemies," Sylvain gave the conclusion, a spite much appreciated by Yven to see at last. They may be little, but that did not make their lives any less important than those of bigger kingdoms. They may not have coins, but that didn't mean they were suddenly worth becoming food for monsters in the Witchers' eyes.

"We don't have the military power to apply a conquering technique even on villages, not to mention castles or other keeps," Rodkah scoffed. His bright blonde hair, braided tunnels, fell heavily on his dark shoulders, bare under a poor shirt.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," Sylvain hummed lowly, before his eyes focusing ahead and speaking just a bit louder. "If they won't help us, then their enemies will value our strategic position for sure. Send a raven to Nilfgaard."

It was that which rendered the silence of the council permanent, before the avalanche of dispute, towards which Sylvain remained a passive watcher, with the power and all the decisions already taken. A better leader sounded at the foot of the Dragon Mountains and further away from it, the roar of this rise from the graves of irrelevance rolled into the waves of rivers.

The river Buina separated into Gwenllech and carried its cold waters to the tall ruin of a fortress that the melancholy of the Witchers kept for their base even beyond the wars which rendered its once glorious paths and bridges, to roads that earned names such as the Killer.

It was a cold road, far more dangerous has Azaras attempted to take it on her own, without Geralt who was simply taking a known ride home. Home would have her glance back, to the north-west, where somewhere, behind the horizon, a bare geographical knowledge reminded her Arcapan should still be, perhaps as tall standing as she remembered it, but definitely not yet remained a homeland.

So she was happy simply by breathing the northerner air, a blade down the nose and to the lungs, clearint the thoughts, the body, the soul.

It was much needed after three days of horseback riding, of reminiscence between Azaras and Geralt's horse, Płotka, a name he somehow decided to give to any and all horses he ever changed in his longevity ruled life, because they all looked the same.

Though tired in the way that hunger became a true daze conjurer for Azaras, the trip had its perks, on a more superficial level: the destination of their conversation. Geralt may not have been the talkative type, but Azaras had not seen a friendly face in years and there was much to speak of with a Witcher, in her case.

"It can't be true though, can it? Not having emotions..." Her voice carried what the rumors have spread about his kind.

Her kind, perhaps too.

Azaras blocked out most emotions, fortified her walls even better than the narrowed paths Geralt led them on to climb to the castle of Kaer Morhen, but she felt many emotions too. Anger, thrills, satisfaction... And more important, she knew Geralt through the prysm of one memory form a colorful festival, where she glimpsed at smiles, at a heavy breath in a whole new context, beyond that of a fight.

An emotionless person could never look so alive.

"It's just their certain way of dehumanizing us." Geralt surprised himself when he sighed out that statement. It has been hiding in his chest, in his mind, as a boiling point kept under a bubbling cover, a foam stopped by a wooden spoon, and in a way, Azaras removed those constraints by simply being a warmth of a humane past, wrapped in a foil of the home he was now walking towards too.

He didn't speak his mind on these matters often because he had always considered complaints as a weakness; the reality tilted the scales towards a relief instead. Geralt held his breath, awkwardly expecting an answer towards his most open state of being.

Azaras sighed, "That's how the world is then, huh?"

Geralt looked back at her.

"When you reach an extreme, you suddenly pass into a degraded existence, because at the end of the day, everyone just wants to feel superior. By shaming the weak or throwing rocks at the strong."

"Hm." His nod carried the hum while he stared ahead. Around the corner, at the little steps of their horses, the gates of the fortress formed into their view, crooked and dark, at the end of a bridge covered in claw marks and burns from ages of violence.

It was then when Geralt knew he wasn't passive toward Azaras anymore. For all it mattered, if Vesemir could prove her as one of them, then he'd make sure this is her new home. Eskel would surely enjoy the change of finally having a woman in their creed.

And that did bring a smile on his face.

While the view, left Azaras mouth slightly agape. She travel, of course, during her two years of mindlessly hunting the unknown, but without the looks nor the coin, she kept her distance from big cities. Kaer Morhen was a ruin in which life endured.

Blueish reflection from the mountains of snow behind, played into the amber of flames that shone in windows made of broken walls of bricked stone and put together boulders. Survival, endurance, loyalty; true guidelines of the Witchers shone through the cracks and inside the fortress in lively corners. A training yard and finally, a long hall, at the end of which, a dead stump of a once great tree flickered decorated in dozens of medallions, smilar to the one Azaras saw Geralt wear and never take off.

The medallion with a wolf's head on it, a circular piece of metal hanging around his neck as a badge.

"Of course," a strong voice beamed from somewhere in these hall where tables have been brought, though they lacked warmth, or food, or drinks. In fact, Azaras did not see anyone around, while her steps went in circles, trying to see as much as possible. It was part of an instinct to know, mixed with the curiosity allowed by a new place.

That thunderous voice stopped her when it continued, revealing so, beside the tree, a massive man. So old his hair greyed out and receded, he still carried himself a grin from a glorious youth, "Only our Geralt could return home with trouble next to him."

chapter dedicated to Donisha0