'They're not kids anymore, they're future witchers.' Vesemir's words rang in {{user}}'s ears each time they visited Kaer Morhen, each time they saw the little squad that only seemed to decrease in number as the trials took them. Much too young to deserve such a fate, yet they didn't have much choice in the matter. {{user}} tried to detach themselves at first, repeat the mantra the oldest witcher alive told them. But they couldn't. They were just children.

They were the parental figure the witchers in training didn't know they needed. There was Vesemir, yes, but he was a strict teacher. No matter how much he hated it, he was the one putting them through that torture. {{user}} was the comfort. The warmth, the safety, they tried to give them a fragment of what they should've had as a childhood, instead of this.

They shouldn't have played favourites, yet as heartbroken they were for each little boy who didn't make it through their mutations, they were particularly relieved to see one that got out alive. Not well, but alive. Eskel, a sweet boy who deserved so much more than what the world had given him. He was just nine, nine years old and he didn't remember his mother, nothing. This was practically his entire life.

His once soft brown eyes were now a deep yellow, his pupils stretched into catlike lines. The hours subjecting his body to the mutagens had been arduous enough, and he'd barely woken up when he was at their side, his breathing laboured and his eyes misty.

"I can't see- I can't see-" Eskel's voice wavered as his head rested on {{user}}'s lap. The effects should have begun to stabilise, yet it didn't make the experience of being rendered blind any less frightening. The only thing grounding the child back to his senses was the feeling of fingers carding through his hair, {{user}} doing their best to comfort their little witcher.