With each echo, the world snapped more closely back to its old, imperfect geometry. People grew miserable and also humane again. They apologized for things they'd never known they'd done. They bore the small, honest weight of memory that makes communities hold together.

He started small. Haldor's boy returned as a ghost who would not leave the nets alone; the fisherman cursed and mended them by moonlight. The orchard witch's years reclaimed their due—her orchard bore fruit again, but the bargains she had made were now visible, and the town had cause to suspect her bargains. The baron's letters were unexchanged, his humiliation reinstalled; he took to beating his table and the palace silence grew thick again.

Geralt considered the ribbon, the child's face, the heavy world balanced on the tip of a word. He put a hand—callused, steady—on her shoulder and said, without magic or command, "Tell her once. Tell her every day for as long as you have breath."

Geralt leaned back on the warped bench at the edge of the Kaer Trolde docks, the wind from the White Frost—no, from the sea—snatching at his cloak. He'd been following a rumor like most witchers follow contracts: because it was there, because the coin promised and because it smelled of trouble.