Kaer Morhen, Late Autumn, 1179
"Eryn. Quit drifting."
The voice cracked through the brittle air like a whip snapping bone.
Eryn jolted upright. The cold gnawed at his skin, but it was the voice—sharp, unmistakable—that pulled him back from the half-dream.
Standing before him was a man wrapped in a battered black cloak, a wide-brimmed hat shadowing the lines of an old, hard face. But the eyes—those molten-gold slits—cut through the morning gloom like knives.
Predator's eyes. Patient. Merciless.
"Apologies, Master Vesemir," Eryn said, forcing himself to stand a little straighter. His voice came out thin, scraped raw by the cold. "I lost focus."
Vesemir gave a short grunt, neither acceptance nor rebuke, and let his gaze sweep across the four apprentices shivering around him.
"When you're facing a drowner," he said, voice as dry as dead leaves, "your silver blade's your best friend. Sometimes your only friend."
He said it like a man reading from a ledger, but the words carried weight, heavier than steel.
The lecture dragged on, each sentence thudding against Eryn's ears like stones dropped into a well. Monster lore, battle tactics, alchemy basics—all delivered with the same clipped brutality Vesemir reserved for both teaching and killing.
Eryn tried—he really tried—to focus.
But his mind kept slipping, sliding away from this courtyard of stone and frost, back to a world that felt more imaginary by the hour.
Three days ago, he hadn't been Eryn at all.
He'd been Lin Ai.
Middle manager. Age thirty. Disposable.
No parents to call. No lover waiting. No real friends, if he was honest with himself.
Just rows of cubicles, endless PowerPoints, and the slow, grinding erosion of dreams.
He remembered the project—the sleepless nights, the hollow caffeine highs, the sick certainty that none of it would matter.
And he remembered the betrayal.
How that grinning little parasite waltzed in at the last second, grabbed the credit, and got promoted—just like that.
While Lin Ai and the others were handed... milk tea.
One cup each.
As if the sugar could sweeten the humiliation burning at the back of their throats.
He could still taste it now—the cheap creamer, the synthetic syrup—and the fury that curdled inside him when he forced the last gulp down.
One sip.
One moment of bitterness.
Then everything shattered.
The world twisted, buckled—and he was no longer Lin Ai, no longer safe inside an air-conditioned coffin of meaningless work.
Instead, he woke choking on a foul, bitter brew that tasted of crushed weeds and old blood, the stink of death curling in his nose.
Pain followed—searing, endless, unforgiving.
Muscles tore themselves apart. Bones cracked like green wood. His mind, his very self, drowned under an alien flood of memories, instincts, reflexes that didn't belong to him.
The Trial of Grasses.
He survived.
Somehow.
But the pain had carved itself so deep into his bones that even now, standing here in the thin autumn sunlight, he could feel its ghost lingering beneath his skin.
He had played The Witcher 3.
Hell, he'd beaten it. Twice.
But no questline, no cutscene, had ever captured this—the grinding ache behind his eyes, the way his stomach curled when the wind shifted and carried the iron stink of dried blood across the courtyard.
And this was just the beginning.
Next month—the Trial of the Mountain.
Fifty percent mortality rate.
Eryn flexed his fingers. They felt stiff. Numb.
How do you prepare for a test where half the students die just taking it?
A spike of panic climbed his spine, sharp and uninvited.
Before it could root itself, a voice—cold, mechanical—cut through his thoughts.
Without warning, a blood-red panel blinked into existence before his eyes.
Witcher's Record: Activated
Hunt monsters. Stronger the target, greater the reward.
Skill acquired: Monsterbane Lv1
Eryn flinched—half expecting Vesemir or someone else to notice, to turn on him—but no one reacted.
Just him and the screen.
A system?
He almost laughed. A raw, broken sound, swallowed at the last second.
Of course.
After being dragged into a cursed medieval world, after surviving a nightmare transformation, why not throw a damned system interface on top?
The screen pulsed, one option glowing faintly: Character.
He hesitated—half from habit, half from fear of what he might see—then focused.
The window unfurled like a wound splitting open.
Name: Eryn
Age: 13
Title: Child of Miracle
Level: 1
HP: 100%
Stamina: 52/52
Attributes:
Strength: 5.1
Agility: 5.3
Constitution: 5.2
Perception: 6.9
Arcana: 3.1
Special Skill: Monsterbane Lv1
Combat Training: Wolf School Greatsword Lv1 (0/100 XP)
Assessment: Pathetic!!!
(Special skills evolve only through level progression.)
Monsterbane (Active):
Consumes 50 stamina. Focuses the mind into Monsterbane state. If conditions are met, delivers a guaranteed fatal strike against a monster.
Eryn stared at the last line.
Pathetic!!!
The insult, bold and sneering, stared back at him from the screen.
Yeah, well... join the club, he thought sourly, swiping the panel closed with a flick of his mind.
The skill sounded good—on paper.
One fatal strike.
If he could survive long enough to land it.
But there was a more immediate problem:
There were no monsters to kill.
Three days after the Trial, Kaer Morhen was sealed up tighter than a lord's treasury. No way in, no way out.
And no opportunities for someone like him—an outsider stitched into a dead boy's skin—to grow stronger.
Stuck, he thought bitterly. Like a fish in a cracked barrel.
"Eryn!"
Vesemir's voice ripped through the courtyard like a blade.
"You're drifting again."
The crack of the old man's book—Drowners and Swamp Hags—snapping shut rang across the stones.
His patience, never generous to begin with, had clearly reached its end.
Eryn flinched but forced himself to meet Vesemir's gaze.
Barely.
Around him, the other apprentices twitched—shifting, shrinking into themselves like mice at the scent of hawk shadow.
Hughes, the smallest, was curled behind him, arms locked around his knees, eyes squeezed shut.
Sleeping.
Right there, in plain view.
Vesemir's jaw set, a hard line carved from years of disappointment.
"Fine," he growled, voice low and lethal. "If theory puts you to sleep, we'll move to something that doesn't."
His words hit like hammer blows.
He turned, barking a name.
"Letho!"
From the shadows near the wall, a giant of a man unfolded himself.
Bald. Scarred. Eyes flat and empty as dead sky.
Letho moved with slow, deliberate menace toward a heavy, cloth-draped cage.
Without ceremony, he ripped the cloth away.
The thing inside screamed.
Pale blue skin slick with mucus. Eyes bulging. Gills flaring at its neck. Long, webbed claws scrabbling against the iron bars.
A drowner.
The instant the cloth dropped, Vesemir's and Letho's medallions began to hum—a low, bone-deep vibration that Eryn could feel through the soles of his boots.
"Rejoice, apprentices," Vesemir said, a thin, poisonous smile curling his lips.
"You've been granted the rare honor of facing a real monster before the scars from your Trial have even finished knitting."
He turned, spitting the next words like something rotten.
"Not like those Cat bastards. Teaching their pups how to cut sleeping throats, pick pockets off cooling corpses."
A beat of silence.
Then Vesemir threw a battered set of student leathers and a plain, dented sword at Eryn's feet.
"Here. Armor up, Master Eryn. Let's see if your arrogance has teeth."
Before Eryn could protest, the others were on him—hauling him into the armor, tightening the belts, shoving the sword into his hands.
The next thing he knew, he was alone in the training pit, boots scuffing against packed sand.
A crowd had gathered—witchers mostly. Leaning against stone walls. Arms crossed. Silent. Watching.
Judging.
Vesemir tilted his head.
"Well? Ready, Master Eryn?"
Eryn opened his mouth to answer—
—but the mechanical voice returned, unbidden:
New Main Quest: The Beginning of the Witcher's Path
Objective: Kill one drowner (0/1)
He closed his mouth. Swallowed hard.
Just one monster.
He could do that.
He had to do that.
"I'm ready," he said, barely recognizing his own voice.
Vesemir's smile was a thin, cruel thing.
Letho rolled the cage forward, the metal groaning under the weight.
Vesemir stepped aside.
The cage door swung open.
The drowner sprang—snarling, claws flashing.
Vesemir moved faster.
A flick of his hand—an invisible crack in the air—Aard exploded outward.
The monster tumbled through the air, landing in the sand a few feet from Eryn, howling and flailing.
Eryn raised his sword and charged—raw instinct driving him forward—
"First mistake," Vesemir called, voice slicing through the courtyard like steel on bone.
"Your weapon."
Eryn stumbled, skidding to a halt mid-stride.
What?
"Drowners," Vesemir said, slow and merciless, "are monsters. You kill monsters with silver."
Eryn looked down.
Steel.
The sword gleamed dully in his hands.
The very blade Vesemir himself had tossed to him.
His fingers clenched the hilt until his knuckles whitened.
Was this part of the lesson, too?
Or just another kind of trial?