The ravens started following him three hours into the Blue Mountains.
Elric noticed them first as black shapes flickering between the pine branches—too coordinated for natural behavior, too silent for scavengers. When he stopped to adjust his pack straps, they stopped. When he resumed walking, they kept pace overhead.
His medallion hummed steadily against his chest, the sound muffled but insistent. Not the violent shuddering it had produced around ancient artifacts, but something subtler. Like a tuning fork struck underwater.
The forest pressed close on either side of the narrow track. Ancient pines stretched toward a sky the color of old pewter, their branches interwoven so thickly that only fragments of daylight reached the forest floor. The air smelled of resin and decay, with something underneath that made his nose wrinkle. Something sweet and wrong.
Clack.
The sound came from his left—wood striking wood in a rhythm that didn't belong to wind or settling branches. Elric's hand drifted to his steel sword's hilt as he scanned the treeline. Nothing moved except the ravens wheeling overhead.
Clack. Clack.
There—deeper in the woods. A figure moved between the trunks, too distant to make out clearly but walking with the deliberate gait of someone following a specific path. The figure paused, turned toward the road, then melted back into the shadows.
Elric's medallion hummed louder.
He loosened his sword in its sheath and quickened his pace. The old trade road Torga had recommended was supposed to be clear of bandits—too remote for most cutthroats, too well-warded by the mountain clans for the desperate ones. But ward-stones could fail, and desperate people made poor decisions.
The ravens cawed once, sharp and discordant, then fell silent.
Something's wrong.
The thought came from the part of his mind trained to read threats—the part that kept Witchers alive in places where ordinary men died. The forest felt twisted, like a melody played in the wrong key. The trees grew too straight, their branches angled at geometrically perfect intervals. Moss covered everything in patterns that suggested design rather than nature.
Elric stopped walking and extended his magical senses, feeling for the disturbance that was making his medallion sing. What he found made his breath catch.
Chaos energy. Old and deep, like a wound in the world that had never properly healed. It pulsed from somewhere ahead on the road, irregular as a fever dream.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The sound was closer now, coming from multiple directions. More figures moved between the trees—a dozen at least, all of them converging on the road with the coordination of a hunting pack.
Elric drew his steel sword and backed against a massive pine trunk. The bark felt warm against his shoulders, warmer than it should have been in the mountain cold. When he looked up, he saw that the tree's branches had grown into unnatural spirals, like frozen smoke.
"Show yourselves," he called. His voice echoed strangely in the dense air, as if the forest itself were swallowing the sound.
They emerged from between the trees like ghosts materializing from mist. Men and women dressed in robes of bark and hide, their faces painted with symbols that hurt to look at directly. They moved with fluid grace, stepping over roots and stones without disturbing so much as a fallen leaf.
At their head walked a figure that made Elric's medallion scream.
The man stood nearly seven feet tall, his frame elongated in ways that suggested more than human genetics. Antler-like growths sprouted from his temples, branching into a crown of bone and gnarled wood. His left eye glowed with sickly green light while his right was milky with blindness. Patches of bark-like skin covered his arms and chest, and when he smiled, his teeth were too sharp and too numerous.
"Elric of Tir Tochair." The man's voice was like wind through dead leaves. "The Sigil-Key walks the old paths at last."
"You know me."
"Know you?" The man laughed, and ravens cawed in response from the canopy above. "We have been waiting for you since before your birth. Since the old bindings cracked and the Flame began to stir."
The cultists—for that's what they had to be—spread out in a loose circle around the road. Elric counted fifteen, maybe twenty. All of them carried weapons of carved wood and bone, and all of them watched him with the hungry patience of predators.
"My name is Marwyn Vell," the tall man continued, "though my followers call me Thorn-Eye. I speak for the Old Flame, the power that burned before the worlds joined."
"And what does this Old Flame want with me?"
"To see if you are worthy." Marwyn's good eye fixed on him with uncomfortable intensity. "You carry the sigil-sight, the ability to wake what sleeps. But sight without strength is useless. The Flame must know if you can serve its purpose."
Elric shifted his grip on his sword hilt. "I serve no flame but my own."
"Do you?" Marwyn tilted his head, antlers catching what little light filtered through the canopy. "Tell me, Witcher—those innovations you've developed, those enhanced Signs you're so proud of. Where did the inspiration come from?"
The question hit like a punch to the gut. Elric thought of his years in the ruins of Tir Tochair, the fragments of ancient lore he'd uncovered, the way solutions sometimes came to him in dreams. The way his magic felt like remembering rather than learning.
"I thought so." Marwyn's smile widened. "The Flame has been shaping you since childhood, preparing you for what's to come. Your parents' death, your discovery by the Griffins, your unusual affinity for pre-Conjunction magic—all of it orchestrated."
"That's impossible."
"Is it? The Flame has slept for centuries, but it has never been powerless. It whispers to those who can hear, guides those who can serve. And when the time comes for its awakening..." Marwyn spread his arms wide. "It will have prepared the perfect key."
One of the cultists stepped forward—a woman with raven feathers braided into her hair and fresh scars carved into her cheeks. She held a curved blade that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.
"The testing begins," she announced. "If he survives, he proves his worth. If he dies, he was never worthy to begin with."
Elric settled into a combat stance, steel sword held in guard position. "And if I refuse to play your game?"
"Then you die anyway," Marwyn said with genuine regret. "The Flame cannot allow the unworthy to block its path."
The first cultist attacked without warning, her dark blade whistling through the air where Elric's head had been a heartbeat before. He rolled aside and came up in a crouch, his steel sword deflecting a second strike from behind.
They moved like dancers, each attack flowing seamlessly into the next. No wasted motion, no unnecessary flourishes. These weren't bandits or desperate refugees—they were trained fighters with a purpose.
Elric parried a thrust aimed at his ribs and countered with a pommel strike that dropped one attacker. But three more pressed in immediately, forcing him to give ground toward the treeline.
His medallion vibrated so violently it felt like it might tear through his skin.
Focus. Read the patterns. Find the weakness.
One of the cultists raised his weapon—a staff topped with carved bone—and began chanting in a language that predated human civilization. The air around the staff began to glow with the same sickly green light that burned in Marwyn's eye.
Elric traced Aard in the air and released it just as the cultist completed his spell. The telekinetic blast caught the man in the chest and sent him flying into a tree trunk with a crack that echoed through the forest. The staff shattered on impact, its green light winking out.
"Impressive," Marwyn called from the edge of the circle. "But can you handle this?"
He raised his own staff—a twisted length of blackroot wood carved with symbols that seemed to writhe in the peripheral vision. The ravens overhead began to call, their voices weaving together into something that almost resembled words.
The trees around them began to move.
Branches reached down like grasping fingers, roots erupted from the forest floor to trip him, and vines dropped from the canopy to encircle his arms. Elric slashed at the reaching vegetation while trying to keep track of the cultists still pressing their attack.
A thorn-covered vine wrapped around his sword arm. He managed to free himself with a quick cut, but the distraction allowed another cultist to get inside his guard. The woman's blade scored across his ribs, parting leather and drawing blood.
Elric spun away from the follow-up strike and traced Igni in the air. Flames erupted from his palm, washing over the nearest cluster of attacking vines. They recoiled with sounds like screaming wind, and for a moment he had space to breathe.
"You fight well for one so young," Marwyn observed. His voice carried easily over the sounds of battle. "But you hold back. You use child's magic when you could command forces that would reshape this forest."
"I use what works."
"What works?" Marwyn laughed. "Show me the true power, Sigil-Key. Show me the magic that resonates with the Flame itself."
Another wave of cultists pressed forward. These ones moved differently—not like trained fighters but like people whose bodies were no longer entirely their own. Their eyes held the same green glow as Marwyn's, and they attacked with suicidal disregard for their own safety.
Elric was forced to kill three of them in rapid succession, his steel blade finding gaps in their wooden armor. But for every one that fell, two more seemed to emerge from the shadows between the trees.
His medallion was screaming now, the sound so loud he could barely think. The focusing charm Torga had given him helped stabilize his casting, but it couldn't block out the chaotic energies radiating from Marwyn's staff.
I need to end this quickly.
Elric stepped back against the largest pine and traced a complex glyph sequence in the air—not one of the traditional Signs, but one of his own innovations. Aard and Yrden woven together into something that bent space around him like a lens.
The hybrid Sign erupted outward in a wave of force that sent every cultist within twenty feet flying. Trees groaned and cracked under the pressure. Ravens fell from the sky like black rain.
When the effect faded, half the attacking force was down. The survivors picked themselves up slowly, their coordination broken.
"Now that," Marwyn said with genuine admiration, "is worthy of the Flame's attention."
But instead of pressing the attack, the tall man stepped back and raised his staff above his head. The bone and wood carvings began to glow with that sick green light, and the air around him shimmered like heat haze.
"You have proven yourself capable, Sigil-Key. When the time comes, you will be ready." He looked directly at Elric, his mismatched eyes burning with fanatic certainty. "The Flame calls to you even now. Listen carefully, and you will hear its song."
The world twisted. Reality folded in on itself like origami made of light and shadow. When Elric's vision cleared, the cultists were gone. All of them, including their fallen comrades. Only scorch marks on the forest floor and broken branches showed that the battle had happened at all.
He stood alone on the empty road, his sword still in his hand and his medallion gradually quieting to its usual hum. The ravens had vanished as well, leaving behind a silence so complete it felt like a physical weight.
Your presence will awaken it.
The words echoed in his memory, spoken by a dying cultist who shouldn't have known anything about him. But they had known. They had been waiting for him specifically, testing him for some purpose he didn't understand.
Elric sheathed his sword and checked his wounds. The cut on his ribs was shallow—it would heal cleanly. More concerning was the way his magic felt different now, like a door had been opened that he hadn't known was there.
He touched his medallion and felt something he'd never experienced before. A resonance, faint but unmistakable, coming from somewhere far to the north. From the direction of Kaer Morhen.
The Flame That Reflects hungers for minds like yours.
Marwyn's words echoed in his skull as he resumed walking. The old trade road stretched ahead through the dark forest, winding toward whatever waited at the Wolf's keep. Behind him, the mountains watched with the patience of stone.
His medallion hummed its steady song, no longer alone. Something else hummed with it now, a harmony that spoke of ancient hungers and patient schemes. Something that had been shaping him since childhood without his knowledge.
Something that called itself the Old Flame.
Elric pulled his cloak tight against the mountain wind and walked north toward his destiny. The ravens were gone, but their memory lingered like the taste of copper in his mouth.
In the distance, storm clouds gathered over the peaks that hid Kaer Morhen from view.