The war table no longer felt like a place where decisions were made.
It felt like a map that was finally beginning to move.
Ink lines had been redrawn so many times that the parchment beneath them had grown soft and dark, the Hinterlands marked not by borders but by circles — overlapping, narrowing, refining. Solas stood at one end of the table with a piece of charcoal in hand, his movements precise, economical, every gesture the continuation of a thought that had begun hours earlier.
Inigo had taken the opposite side, surrounded by open books, loose pages, and three different attempts at reproducing the same symbol.
"All objects of myth leave a trail," Solas said, not looking up. "Not of presence — of disturbance. The Veil does not forget."
Inigo's ears twitched with excitement.
"And this Scroll shouts," he replied. "Not with sound. With wrongness. Like a misplaced note in a song."
Ciri leaned against one of the pillars, watching them.
For the first time since she had arrived in this world, she was not the center of the conversation.
And she did not mind.
Leliana's report lay open between them, weighed down by a dagger.
A merchant. Rural route. Sudden wealth. Two ancient sheets were used as decorative script because he could not read them.
Ciri exhaled through her nose.
"Of course," she muttered.
The fate of worlds is reduced to wall decoration.
Solas finally looked at her.
"This is consistent," he said calmly. "Power rarely announces itself to those unprepared to recognize it."
Inigo grinned.
"In my homeland, we once stored a sacred relic in a biscuit tin," he said. "It was eaten by mistake."
Solas stared at him.
Inigo's tail flicked.
"It was a very confusing week."
Elyanna entered without announcement.
The room shifted — not because of authority alone, but because she brought with her the weight of decision.
"The merchant has moved," she said. "Redcliffe's outer farms. Under the protection of a local bann who believes the Venatori are hunting the same prize."
At the time, the air tightened.
Corypheus was no longer a distant force.
He was reaching for the same object.
The plan formed quickly — not because it was simple, but because everyone in the room already understood the stakes.
A small party.
Speed over display.
No army banners. No Herald's procession.
A hunt.
"You will be under my command," Elyanna said, looking directly at Ciri.
Not an order.
A reminder of the choice.
Ciri stepped forward.
"I know."
There was no resistance in her voice this time. No edge.
Only readiness.
The Hinterlands opened before them like a memory of another life.
Wind through tall grass. Farmhouses scattered across the hills. Smoke rising from chimneys in thin, fragile threads. Too peaceful for what they were carrying with them.
Ciri rode in silence for most of the journey.
Not because she had nothing to say — because she was listening.
To Elyanna's short, efficient orders.
To Cole's distant murmurs to things no one else could see.
To Inigo and Solas behind her, already arguing again.
"The displacement pattern suggests the Scroll was separated intentionally," Solas said.
"Or torn," Inigo countered. "Like a page from a book you do not want others to read."
"That implies motive."
"That implies fear."
Solas paused.
"…yes."
Ciri glanced back at them.
Two scholars from different worlds, speaking the same language.
For a moment she wondered what her life would have been if she had been allowed to grow into something like that instead of becoming a weapon.
She turned forward again before the thought could settle.
Redcliffe rose in the distance, its castle catching the late light.
But they did not go to the castle.
They went to the farms.
To a house that had been too well guarded for a simple merchant.
Venatori corpses lay in the field when they arrived.
Not long dead.
Not killed by the Inquisition.
Someone else had reached this place first.
Inside the house, the walls had been stripped bare.
Nails where the parchment had hung.
Dust outlines where something ancient had rested.
Ciri felt it immediately.
The absence.
Not emptiness.
Removal.
Like a wound where something had been cut out.
Solas moved through the room slowly, one hand hovering just above the wall without touching it, eyes unfocused.
"The Veil remembers," he murmured.
Inigo knelt near the hearth, picking up a scrap of parchment no larger than a fingernail.
"Not a decoration," he said softly. "A map."
They laid it on the table.
Storm Coast.
A circle drawn in hurried ink.
No explanation.
No name.
Just a location.
"The merchant?" Elyanna asked.
Cole stepped forward from the doorway, his expression distant and pained.
"Ran," he said. "Not from us. From voices that promised gold and gave him fear. He died in the hills. Alone. Regretting a purchase he did not understand."
Ciri closed her eyes briefly.
Another life crushed between forces it could not even see.
"So," Elyanna said, her voice steady, already moving to the next step. "The Scroll was here. The Venatori came for it. They failed. Someone else took it — and left a trail."
Her gaze moved to the map.
"Storm Coast."
Solas nodded.
"The pattern continues."
Inigo's grin returned, sharp with anticipation.
"The hunt moves to the sea."
As they stepped back into the fading light, Ciri felt it again.
Not the pull of the Scroll.
Not the wrongness of the red rift.
Something else.
Movement.
The sense that the game had shifted.
That somewhere, someone had just realized they were not the only ones searching.
She looked toward the horizon, toward the direction the map indicated.
And for the first time since this had begun, she did not feel like prey.
She felt like a hunter.