The story of Little Eye punches the reader in the gut, especially the last paragraph from Dandelion's perspective:
"Several years later, Dandelion could have changed the contents of the ballad and written about what had really occurred. He did not. For the true story would not have moved anyone. Who would have wanted to hear that the Witcher and Little Eye parted and never, ever saw each other again? About how four years later Little Eye died of the smallpox during an epidemic raging in Vizima? About how he, Dandelion, had carried her out in his arms between corpses being cremated on funeral pyres and had buried her far from the city, in the forest, alone and peaceful, and, as she had asked, buried two things with her: her lute and her sky blue pearl. The pearl from which she never parted note Given to her by Geralt . No, Dandelion stuck with his first version. And he never sang it. Never. To no one. Right before dawn, while it was still dark, a hungry, vicious werewolf crept up to their camp, but saw that it was Dandelion, so he listened for a moment and then went on his way."
Yarpen: We have to live next to each other. We and you, humans. Because we simply don’t have any other option. We’ve known this for two hundred years and we’ve been working towards it for over a hundred. You want to know why I entered King Henselt’s service, why I made such a decision? I can’t allow all that work to go to waste. For over a hundred years we’ve been trying to come to terms with the humans. The halflings, gnomes, us, even the elves – I’m not talking about rusalkas, nymphs and sylphs, they’ve always been savages, even when you weren’t here. Damn it all, it took a hundred years but, somehow or other, we managed to live a common life, next to each other, together. We managed to partially convince humans that we’re not so very different.
Ciri: We’re not different at all, Yarpen. We’re not different at all. After all, you think and feel like Geralt. And like… like I do. We eat the same things, from the same pot. You help Triss and so do I. You had a grandmother and I had a grandmother… My grandmother was killed by the Nilfgaardians. In Cintra.
Yarpen: And mine by the humans. In Brugge. During the pogrom.
The scene soon after where, after a bloody melee between elves and humans with dwarves fighting on both sides and several sympathetic pro-human dwarven characters die, it turns out that the supplies the humans and their dwarven allies were supposed to be escorting were just decoys and the real purpose of this mission was to check if the pro-human dwarves were actually loyal, which they were. The human commander begins to explain and justify all this, but stops in mid-sentence and simply says "sorry". At which point the dwarven commander, Yarpen Zigrin, has a brief, yet intense Heroic BSOD. "What have you done with us? What have you done with us? What have you... made us into?" It sets the tone for the even darker turn of events that follow after. Where one of the other dwarves is kneeling by his dead brother.
Regan: Paulie! Paulie! Why? What will I tell our mother? What am I going to say to her?
Ciri, as if only now realizing the seriousness of the situation, cried shrilly. Once, twice.
"Well, well," the sorcerer clicked. "With head held high and a direct gaze, you entered the lion’s den, my dear, and now you are afraid of a thin glass tube. That’s a shame."
Ciri ignored his admonitions and screamed until the laboratory glassware rattled.
It doesn't help that Ciri's numerous traumatic experiences result in her ashen hair beginning to turn white.
"I’m not crying, the tears in my eyes are from the wind!"
