No pain at first. No violent fracture behind my eyes. Just stillness spreading through me as I sit alone beneath the outer ridge overlooking the Zethon encampment, the night air cold against my skin while distant fires burn across the valley below like scattered stars fallen into the earth. The war continues moving, even now. Messengers crossing between divisions. Soldiers repositioning. Velkiron retreating from one line only to reinforce another.
And somewhere beyond all of it, Xalith still carries the artifact.
I close my eyes anyway. The future opens.
Threads crossing over one another, outcomes branching and collapsing before they fully form, possibilities folding inward beneath the weight of decisions already made. I move through them carefully now, no longer searching for victory, only truth.
I know what I’m looking for.
Control.
Chains hidden beneath alliances. Futures where I become useful enough to cage. Futures where my visions are turnedinto obedience instead of choice. I spent too long expecting that outcome not to search for it now.
I find fragments first.
A Zethon council chamber where men I barely recognize attempt to dictate what I see and when I speak.
A Velkiron envoy offering protection wrapped in softer language.
A future where fear turns me silent long before anyone else tries.
Another where Vaedros stands beside me while others push for restraint, for limitation, for ownership disguised as strategy.
But none of them hold.
Every path where someone reaches for control fractures before completion.
Every future where I am traded breaks apart before it settles into permanence.
And Vaedros…He remains.
Not always beside me physically. Sometimes across battlefields. Sometimes bloodied. Sometimes furious enough to make the room around him feel dangerous. But never once standing above me.
Never once holding chains.
The realization arrives slowly, almost carefully, because I spent so long preparing for betrayal that the absence of it feels harder to trust than the threat itself.
The vision shifts again.
I see myself standing at the edge of a ruined city months from now, wind tearing through black banners while soldiers move beneath the walls carrying both Zethon and Drazharel markings side by side.
Vaedros reaches me through the crowd without hesitation. Not command. Not possession. Choice.
The future folds closed before I can follow it further.
Pain comes afterward, sharp enough to force a breath from me as I brace one hand against the stone beside me. Blood slips warm beneath my nose. I wipe it away automatically and stare out across the valley while my pulse settles back into rhythm.
No chains. No cages. No future where I disappear beneath someone else’s will.
I believe that fully.
Footsteps approach behind me sometime later, familiar long before they stop beside me. Vaedros says nothing at first. He lowers himself onto the stone beside me with more care than he would have needed before the ruin, the old wound still healing beneath layers of bandages and stubbornness.
“You pushed too far again,” he says eventually, his gaze settling on the blood at my wrist.
“You say that every time.”
“Because every time remains accurate.”
