Fae and human alike perish in the battle. Children. Warriors. The innocent and the armed.
And beneath it all, the land screams.
This is the future from a decision made in error.
Unless…
A second thread pulses as I’m drawn from the first.
A new scene pulls me in.
The same room. The same general. The same desk and steaming tea.
But this time, when he rubs his temple and leans over the duty roster, his pen hesitates. He double-checks the schedule, frowns, then flips a page in the log and writes out a correction, assigning a pair of guards to the northwestern tower for the midnight shift.
The scene shifts to the tower now filled with a guard. A fae woman with snow in her braid and a keen eye on the horizon. When the first dark shape breaches the distant sea line, she tolls the heavy bell and yells.
A wave of light crackles along the cliffs, alerting every patrol within miles.
The court doesn’t scramble in defense this time…this time they deploy.
Frost spreads over the shoreline before the ships can even reach it, locking the ocean in a prison of ice. The boats creak and groan, trapped mid-current. Theirhulls shudder as sheets of frost bloom upward, engulfing the decks and immobilizing the engines.
No fire. No bloodshed. No burned forest. No bodies in the snow.
I see fae warriors forming a wall across the ridgeline, magic glittering along their skin as they watch from a distance. Ready, but still.
And this time, the earth is quiet. Still strained and watchful, but not wounded.
This version of the night holds its breath in tension, not pain.
I feel the pull as the scene fades away, leaving me staring at the two glowing threads.
The second hums louder, pulsating like it wants me to reach out…like itneedsme to.
My hand lifts slowly, like my body is responding before my mind can catch up. I don’t know what will happen if I touch it. I don’t know if this is real or complete madness, or something in between.
My fingers brush the thread, and the moment I make contact, a pulse surges up my arm, threading heat and ice through every nerve until my breath catches sharply in my throat. Light blooms across my vision in gold and blinding white, swallowing everything else. I stagger, or I think I do, but there’s no longer ground beneath my feet.
The sensation is like being pulled backward through time by the spine.
The air collapses around me in a shriek of movement. Wind howls in my ears, breath is stolen from my lungs as my heartbeat stutters against a current I can’t fight. The world blurs in reverse, not just rewinding, but unraveling.
Then…silence.
The pressure in my chest releases all at once.
Snow crunches beneath my boots, soft with fresh layers settled atop old stone. Frost clings to the evergreens in thick spirals, their branches heavy and glittering, needles dipped in silver and ice. The castle rises before me again, its towers coiled in blue-white light, their ice-covered spires reaching toward the stars like spears tipped in moonlight.
In front of me stands Sylvin.
His white-blond hair gleams like snow under the moonlight, and his smile is soft, lazy, entirely untouched by everything I just witnessed.
One hand is outstretched, waiting, as if I haven’t just stepped through a different version of this very moment.
“Welcome to my land, little echo.”
My hand doesn’t move.
