The year 1211 arrived with a biting frost that turned the mud of Blaviken into jagged iron. For Aris, now eleven, the world was no longer a blur of infant confusion but a chessboard of high stakes. While he stood on the salt-crusted docks, his hands rhythmically moving as he used Scourgify to invisibly strip the rot and brine from his father's fishing nets, a cold ripple vibrated through his mind.
A golden notification chime, audible only to him, shattered the morning silence.
[TIMELINE EVENT DETECTED]
Event: Birth of the Destined One.
Location: Unknown.
Subject: Geralt, son of Visenna.
Status: The Witcher Schools are ruins; the Trial of the Grasses is now a death sentence.
Aris froze, a net clutched in his calloused hands. The System's text pulsed with a new, urgent command.
SAGE TASK: Develop a "Stable Mutagen" using Harry Potter Herbology to ensure the Child of Destiny survives his future transformation.
Reward: 1,000 Points & The Recipe for Wiggenweld Potion.
The weight of the future felt heavy. In a world where Kaer Morhen was a graveyard, the boy born today would eventually face a butcher's block disguised as a transformation. If Aris was to be a Sage, he couldn't just heal coughs; he had to rewrite the alchemy of this world.
The relative peace of his double life shattered later that evening. Aris entered the hut to find his mother, Hana, standing by the wash-basin, her face as white as a bleached sail. On the floor lay a bundle of damp clothes, and protruding from his spare tunic was a gnarled, humanoid root.
It was a Mandrake. As Hana had pulled the tunic, the seedling had let out a muffled, piercing squeal that still echoed in the small room.
"Aris!" she hissed, slamming the heavy wooden door and bolting it. Her hands shook so violently she had to grip the table to stand. "The Ealdorman's son... he came by the well today. He said he saw the 'Witch-Fire' in the salt-marshes last night. A green glow that didn't flicker. Now I find this?"
She pointed at the Mandrake, which gave a faint, disgruntled grunt. "They are talking, Aris. They talk of demons in the mud. If the neighbors see this... if they find your garden, they won't just burn the plants. They'll hang us from the harbor crane and throw your father into the sea."
Marek, sitting in the shadows by the hearth, looked at his son. He was no longer the sickly man Aris had saved years ago; he was strong again, but his eyes were filled with a weary, paternal terror.
"The Witcher schools are gone, boy," Marek said, his voice a low rumble. "There are no mages left who care for the law, and no knights who protect the strange. You're becoming a man, Aris. You're tall, and you look at people with eyes that see too much. If you want to be a 'Sage,' you have to start acting like a ghost."
Aris looked at his parents—the people who had protected his secret at the cost of their own peace of mind. He realized that his "secret garden" in the marshes was a ticking time bomb. To cultivate the Stable Mutagen, to hatch the Magical Creature Eggs the System promised, and to truly guide this world, he needed more than a patch of mud.
He needed a sanctuary.
"I won't let them hurt you," Aris said, his voice surprisingly deep for an eleven-year-old. "But you're right. A ghost cannot live in a fisherman's hut."
That night, Aris packed a small satchel with dried fish and his meager herb supplies. He looked at the Gulf of Praxeda cliffs to the north. He remembered a sea-cave he had seen during a storm—a place where the tide was too fierce for boats, but perhaps not for a boy with a System and a plan.
He would build a place of power. He would become the myth the villagers whispered about, far away from the prying eyes of the Ealdorman.
The cliffs north of Blaviken were teeth of black granite, gnashing against the grey foam of the Gulf of Praxeda. At eleven years old, Aris climbed them with a desperate, practiced agility. He had spent weeks scouting for a place where the prying eyes of the village could not reach—a place where the "Witch-Fire" would be nothing more than a trick of the sea mist.
He found it behind a jagged curtain of rock, accessible only by a narrow, slippery ledge that vanished during high tide. Behind a veil of freezing salt-spray lay a cavernous opening, a cathedral of stone carved by centuries of Atlantic storms.
Aris stepped inside, the roar of the ocean instantly muffled by the depth of the cave. He felt a hum in the air—a convergence of natural power.
SYSTEM PROMPT:
Sanctuary Site Detected.
Evaluation: High isolation. Natural magical resonance: +15% to Potion Potency.
Current Task: Establish the Sage's Sanctum.
Aris didn't waste time. He reached into his satchel and withdrew a small, polished stone. "Lumos," he whispered.
The tip of his finger flared with a steady, white light, pushing back the shadows of the cave. For the first time, he saw the expanse of his new home. It was damp and cold, but it was safe. He spent the next several months in a fever of activity. Using Wingardium Leviosa, he hauled heavy sacks of fertile marsh-peat up the cliffs. He used Diffindo to slice flat slabs of granite into sturdy workbenches.
By the time the year turned, the cave was transformed. Ever-Glowing Stones hung from the ceiling, bathing the cavern in a soft blue light. Rows of Mandrake and Dittany flourished in stone basins, and the air hummed with the steady, rhythmic bubbling of a cauldron.