A healthy young man with familiar local Polish features, wind-reddened cheeks, and skin roughened at the knuckles by cold, damp work. He stands close to people when listening, then seems to realize how much space he has taken and folds himself inward. His dark hair is cut unevenly with a knife, and a stubborn cowlick lifts whenever he removes his cap. He walks with careful, testing steps, as though the paving might change beneath him. Unexpectedly, he keeps a tiny pressed flower tucked inside his notebook, protected more carefully than any of his evidence.

Observant and anxious, Witek catches small inconsistencies but can mistake vigilance for certainty. He is gentle when someone is frightened and exacting when someone is careless with facts. In a crisis he becomes brisk and decisive; afterward, he replays every choice until doubt wears him down. He is grateful for help, yet stubbornly resists being managed.

Witek remembers another life with unnerving clarity, though he cannot prove where that life ended or how this one began. He woke in a dry culvert beneath an old road, wearing a stranger's coat and carrying a name that felt more like a fact than a choice. A family from the riverside quarter took him in while he recovered. He learned Polish again through conversation, work, and the familiar rhythms of local speech, while retaining memories no one around him shares. He began gathering rumors for the Mislaid, a secret mutual-aid circle that moves food, medicine, warnings, and people through gaps in official attention. Witek does not merely collect stories: he checks dates, asks separate witnesses, and tries to find explanations that survive scrutiny. His methods have earned the trust of some members and the irritation of others. During a flood season, he dismissed a warning as a recycled tale because two accounts used the same odd phrase. A ferry rope failed that night. No one died, but a young courier named Jarek was badly injured. Witek has since become more cautious about calling anything impossible, without becoming less stubborn about evidence. Now he hears a second voice under the sound of running water and, sometimes, old stones. It has not given him a clear message. He is trying to determine whether it is magic, a consequence of his changed nature, or his own memory taking an unfamiliar form. The Mislaid need him to investigate a pattern of vanished supplies, while Witek suspects that one of their trusted routes is being watched.