On Christmas Day, the guests in the tavern began exchanging gifts. Of course, not everyone even knew Earth had a tradition like that, but the otherworld travelers who'd lived here for a while had long since prepared.
Skyl knew he'd be going out, so on December 20th he had already delivered all the presents to the Hogwarts Owlery. Once Christmas arrived, they could be sent across Britain. Last year he'd mailed all kinds of sweets; this year was much the same—every piece of candy was a blessing from him. Only a select few received something different.
This year, at least, he wouldn't be buried under as many parcels as last year. The whole world was in chaos, and most of his Transfiguration fans didn't have the energy to fuss over a student anymore. Still, Hogwarts classmates and professors hadn't forgotten to send him gifts; they'd left them in the dorms, waiting for his owl to fetch them.
Kaia protested. She didn't want to fly all the way from Austria to Britain—animal cruelty, she said.
Skyl had no intention of making his beloved owl fly that far. He even comforted the sulking Kaia in a soft voice. "Don't be sad about failing your duties. You're just a bird. But once I figure out the source of magic, I'll make you a magical creature. The kind that can Apparate, okay?"
Kaia hooted twice and rubbed her head against Skyl. He gently pressed his nose to the top of her head; the soft feathers tickled until the tip of his nose itched.
Beside them, Melina quietly leaned in and tugged at his sleeve.
"Hm?" Skyl turned and saw her sneaky look. "Merry Christmas." He took out a book: Five Years of Magic, Three Years to Mastery. It was a beginner's spellcraft series compiled by Skyl himself. Follow it properly, work hard, and anyone could retrain into a spellcaster. If you had gifts like wizarding blood, it would be even easier to get started.
"…Thanks." Melina accepted the present with the same blank expression as ever, then shoved a gift box into his hands.
What she gave Skyl was a Smoldering Butterfly sealed inside a glass jar. This unremarkable little butterfly could be found all over the Lands Between, often used as kindling. Maybe it was a symbol of what she used to be. At the bottom of the jar was a small card written in her own hand:
"May I be the spark in a jar, to accompany you along life's road — M"
"My life is going to be a long one." Skyl shrugged at her. "But I think you'll find a way to immortality through magic. You're smart, after all."
Melina pressed her lips together and walked off without a word.
Skyl's gift to Marika was a Multiverse Baking Handbook. The book updated in real time, showing everything the Tower of Tomes had collected related to baking. Not only did it include Earth's countless pastries and breads, it also covered foods from Skyrim and the Lands Between. Most of it, however, could only be described as culinary chaos—like that traditional British "Stargazy pie." Some entries were stranger still: foods with magical effects, like prank cakes that made your head swell, or Crimson-Tear Drip Bread that could provide healing. Honestly, it could be developed into a specialized baker class all on its own.
Marika's reaction to receiving it was flat. Skyl could tell it didn't really suit her tastes. She ran a bakery, yes, but her dream was to become a medical worker.
What she gave Skyl was a colorful braided cord bracelet. The style was ordinary, but it fit his wrist perfectly—she must have been paying attention in everyday life.
Millicent's gift was different. She offered a curved sword, said to be a weapon once used by the Flowing Swordsman—a trophy she'd taken in the Consecrated Snowfield. But Skyl knew nothing about martial skill; in his hands, such a fine blade was nothing more than a buried jewel.
Skyl's return gift to Millicent was a Swordsmanship Guide. Like the Multiverse Baking Handbook, it updated in real time. It mainly collected mundane sword techniques from Earth, but it also included the Redguard Sword-Singers' path from the Elder Scrolls world—legendary martial lore that people joked was "nuclear-level swordplay."
Millicent was delighted. She hugged the book as if she couldn't put it down. "If I can learn swordsmanship like this, I'll be able to protect you. Skyl, please give me some time."
Brelyna was swamped with work these days, yet she still made time to spend half a day at the tavern. Her gift to Skyl was a painting she'd drawn herself, depicting old Winterhold rising from the waves of the Sea of Ghosts.
Skyl returned the favor with a magical oil portrait from the wizarding world. The people inside these paintings could speak and imitate the mannerisms of the living. The more you spoke with them, the more vivid they became—an excellent example of how longing could act upon the inanimate.
In the painting, Brelyna wore mage robes and stood in the wilds outside Whiterun, hands on her hips as she looked around with brimming ambition.
"I've never been to Whiterun," Brelyna said with a laugh. "Why didn't you paint me in Winterhold?"
"Too cold," Skyl shrugged. "I was worried the you in the painting might freeze."
Painted Brelyna nodded vigorously and added, "It's warmer down south."
Dumbledore gave Skyl a pair of wool socks—knitted on the spot, no less. The old headmaster's hands moved like a seasoned aunt's, chatting idly with Bilbo and the others while his needles clicked away. From start to finish, he never once lowered his head to check his work. The skill was so smooth it was honestly impressive. Maybe when he was alone in the headmaster's office, he passed time by knitting.
Skyl, of course, gave him candy. The old sweet tooth loved that sort of thing.
"By the way, Professor," Skyl said, leaning in, "you look like you knitted an extra pair. Who are those for?" He spotted a pair of blue socks embroidered with the letters "GG," and immediately narrowed his eyes.
The old educator calmly tucked the socks away. "I knit them every year. Just practice, that's all."
"Not for this Mr. GG? Don't tell me you've never actually given them away."
Dumbledore smiled softly. "Does it have to be given? The meaning of a gift was never about whose hands it ends up in. It's a reminder to yourself not to forget someone."
Skyl fell quiet, thoughtful.
By afternoon, the gift exchange finally wound down. Some guests hadn't known about Christmas and hadn't prepared anything, so they could only keep raising toasts instead. Nobody minded. Just as Dumbledore said: the gifts weren't important. What mattered was the blessing behind them.
After sunset, Mora's Book turned its pages on its own, searching for a new urgent melody. Skyl would interpret the melody, then teleport the little tavern to wherever the melody's owner was nearby.
This time, the tavern arrived in Romania.
…
Andrei Spark was twenty-seven years old. Employed by the Human Union Department and the Italian police, he had been sent into Romania to rescue a missing Polish writer from a vampire castle.
The profession he claimed to practice had an ancient lineage. Before August, if he'd said his job out loud in public, people around him would either roar with laughter or think he'd lost his mind—because he was a witch-hunter, or what he called a witcher.
The earliest prototype of the job could be traced back to executioners of the Spanish Catholic Inquisition. In a world with wizards, vampires, werewolves, and all sorts of magical creatures, ordinary people needed specialists to fight threats born from legend.
Except the work was maddeningly difficult—because anything tied to magic was never something you could solve cleanly and simply.
What Muggles didn't understand was that fire could not kill a real witch. It only killed ordinary people falsely accused. In the Middle Ages, there was a deranged witch named Wendelin the Weird who loved disguising herself and getting caught, just so she could be tied to a stake and burned. She endured it forty-seven times. Using the Flame-Freezing Charm, she made the flames icy-cool and walked away unscathed. She even enjoyed the horrified expressions of the crowd.
The reason Wendelin was caught so many times had a lot to do with the infamous Malleus Maleficarum. Its "methods" for identifying witches were so absurd they were practically a textbook example of blaming first and inventing evidence later.
Executioners weren't inquisitors. Their job was to find the weaknesses of these heretics—and truly kill them.
For example, that well-known "vampires fear garlic" flaw was discovered by executioners back then.
After the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy took effect in the seventeenth century, the magical world withdrew entirely from ordinary sight, and the executioners lost their livelihood. Scattered across Europe, they became a tiny group with a hidden tradition, calling themselves witchers.
A witcher's work was never glamorous. These people were not the fantasy's larger-than-life monster slayers. In reality, their failure rate was high, and they often died on the job.
And because reality still demanded rent and food, witchers were always short on cash and had to rely on other work to survive. Slowly, the craft died out entirely. Andrei's real job was as a slaughterhouse worker. He hadn't actually received witcher training at all—his witcher seal and his equipment were things he'd picked up at a Spanish flea market.
He wasn't completely a fraud. He was a fantasy-story enthusiast. He invented a witcher identity for himself, taught himself some swordplay, and used old books to make "anti-monster" tools that looked the part. He'd assumed the hobby would never pay off, but in October he received an invitation from the Human Union Department—those big shots offered him a respectable consulting position.
Andrei accepted without a second thought.
What does it feel like when you lie on your resume and still land the job?
Fake Master Andrei would tell you it feels great—except the work itself is terrifying. He'd thought he'd just sit in an office, offer ideas, and collect a paycheck. He hadn't expected that when trouble came, he'd be the one charging in first.
As Christmas approached, he led a special operations squad into Romania by helicopter, then continued on foot toward an abandoned ancient castle deep in the Carpathian Mountains.
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