Sebastian stood before the crowd, his dark robes catching the wind like a funeral shroud. He held up a Soul Stone, its crystalline surface swirling with the faint, trapped mists of the fragments he had harvested earlier.
"You ask of the blade," Sebastian began, his voice echoing with the weight of the Three Tiers. "The power comes from the Soul Stone. It is a vessel, a conduit used to gain power from the God to whom you possess Affinity. The deeper your devotion and the greater your affinity, the more varieties of divine power you may receive."
He walked toward the table, placing the stone down so the light of the setting sun caught its facets. "This stone can be used to Curse a weapon, just as I did for the Witcher. It increases its strength and grants it otherworldly attributes. In rare moments of deep alignment, a powerful enchantment may even bloom within the steel."
The crowd murmured, half-fearful and half-covetous. A Nilfgaardian soldier stepped forward, eyes fixed on the crystal. "But the cost, Priest? To trap a soul is a sin in every church from here to the Great Sun."
"That is where your teachers failed you," Sebastian replied, his gaze sharp. "This is a legal harvest. The Soul Stone does not devour the person; it captures only a fragment of the soul left by death—a mere echo. The soul itself remains whole, free to pass to the beyond. It can be used only once for every dead, making it a tithe, not a theft."
He looked at the villagers and the soldiers alike. "I advise you: use this on your dead enemies and the monsters that plague your fields. Let their malice be turned into your protection."
A silence fell as an elven woman spoke up, her voice trembling. "And our friends? Our kin who fall?"
Sebastian's expression softened into a look of harsh benevolence. "Even them. If used on a dead friend, the fragment does not curse. It blesses. Their echo remains with you, granting the wielder of the weapon a minor permanent blessing, or a lingering boon to guide your hand. It is the ultimate act of remembrance."
The revelation rippled through the crowd. The fear of necromancy was being replaced by a pragmatic, holy hunger. They didn't see a dark art anymore; they saw a way to make their suffering mean something. To the Nilfgaardians, it was the ultimate Discipline; to the peasants, it was a way to keep their loved ones close while defending their homes.
Sebastian watched them, the "Right Track" solidifying beneath his feet. He had given them the tools to harvest their own destiny.
The air in the White Orchard inn was no longer thick with the smell of cheap ale and stale fear. Instead, it smelled of Wild Dagga and the iron-sweet scent of the Hexen.
When Geralt and Vesemir pushed through the heavy oak doors, they didn't find the usual scene of a village waiting to be purged. In this new reality, Sebastian's teachings had taken deep root. The villagers weren't just survivors; they were practitioners. Many wore small, carved bone charms or carried Soul Stones that hummed with a soft, violet light. Those who had lost loved ones in the war now felt a peaceful warmth rather than a cold void; the fragments of their kin, harvested legally and blessed through the Three Tiers, provided permanent boons of strength, luck, or clarity.
Near the hearth, a woman sat with a mug of cider, her eyes glowing with a faint, verdant hue. She was laughing, her voice carrying across the room with an unnatural resonance.
"I tell you, the Griffin was just a bird!" she bragged, slamming her mug down. "With the power of Vinushka in my veins, I could have choked it with my bare hands. I am chosen! The Green God has breathed life back into my garden and my soul!"
The innkeeper, Elsa, didn't look up from the glass she was polishing, but her own eyes flickered with a disciplined, golden light. "Peace, Martha," Elsa said, her voice steady and commanding. "Vinushka gave you a garden; Amon gave me the discipline to run this house while the armies march. My power is for order, not for bragging."
In the corner, a group of men sat in tense silence. They were dressed in the rugged, travel-worn gear of Temerian "freedom fighters," their faces masked by shadows. In any other timeline, they would have been the aggressors, posing as patriots to shake down the villagers. But here, they were the ones who felt like outsiders. The Temerians they sought to "liberate" were now unironically pro-Nilfgaardian—not out of love for the Emperor, but because the "Right Track" was actually working.
The leader of the group, a man with a scarred lip, glared toward the table where Sebastian sat quietly with his scriptures. He didn't see a boy; he saw the obstacle that had ruined their chance to play the hero.
"Look at them," the bandit hissed to his companions, his hand twitching toward a dagger that now felt heavy and useless. "Praying to jars and stones. That priest has stolen the fire from their bellies. They don't want freedom; they want a God who gives them rain."
The bandits felt the shift in the room. The villagers weren't cowering; they were looking at the "freedom fighters" with a mix of pity and suspicion. In a world where the Old Gods actually answered, a fake patriot with a rusty sword was no longer a threat—he was a nuisance.
Geralt leaned against the bar, watching the tension. He could feel the Cursed Silver Sword on his back vibrating in response to the divine energy in the room.
"Seems your 'Right Track' is making people a bit too confident, Priest," Geralt said, his voice low enough only for Sebastian to hear. "Confidence is good. Arrogance? That usually ends in a contract for me."
"It is not arrogance to recognize the Truth," Sebastian replied without looking up from his parchment. "It is only a problem for those who profit from the Lie."