I saw it then, the future the Harbingers wanted. Reality locked in amber, unchanging, unevolving. Prophecies reduced to predictable patterns, fate so controlled that free will became an illusion. And at the center of it all, me, the Chalice remade as their perfect vessel, channeling only the futures they approved, ending all possibilities that threatened their order.
My protectors were there too. Rook, Zane, Milo, Fenric—bound to me not by love but by magical compulsion, their choices stripped away, reduced to mere extensions of the Harbingers' will.
"No," I whimpered, horror flooding through me. "I'd never let that happen."
"You won't have a choice." The Oracle's voice held grim certainty. "If they succeed in transforming you into the new me."
The vision shifted, showing me something worse. My future self, eyes empty of everything human, sitting where the Oracle sat now, wrapped in chains, making the same terrible decisions they'd made for eons. Ending prophecies. Ending lives. Pruning reality's garden with sterile precision.
And my four men, watching me with dead eyes, their souls consumed by the system I'd become.
"Stop," I gasped, pressing my hands to my eyes. "Please."
The vision dissolved. When I looked up, the Oracle was closer than before, somehow having moved without the chains restraining them.
"Now you understand." Their voice held something like sympathy. "Why I allowed myself to be imprisoned rather than pass on this burden willingly."
I struggled to process what I'd seen. "But you still tried. The bones, Jeffrey, they came for me because you called them."
"No." The Oracle shook their head, a motion that took several seconds to complete. "The bones act on their own now. They hunger for a successor. I no longer control them."
"Then how do I stop them? How do I prevent the Harbingers from turning me into... into that?" I gestured at the Oracle's chained form.
They studied me for a long moment, those galaxy eyes seeing through me, past me, into all my possible futures at once.
"You understand what must end," they finally spoke, reaching out to touch my cheek.
The contact sent lightning up my arm, branching through my nervous system like electricity through water. Knowledge poured into me, not gentle this time, but forceful, brutal in itscompleteness. I saw the truth of the Oracle's role, how they hadn't started as the sterile arbiter I'd witnessed in the visions. They'd begun like me, chosen by prophecy, trying to do good. But power corrupts, and absolute power over fate corrodes the soul until nothing human remains.
I saw their first decision to end a prophecy, made with tears and trembling hands. Their thousandth, made with cold efficiency. Their ten-thousandth, made without feeling anything at all.
And I saw what came after, the slow realization of what they'd become, the horror of their own transformation, the desperate attempt to end it by allowing themselves to be imprisoned.
"You chose this," I gasped as the visions receded. "You let them lock you here."
"Better imprisoned than becoming what the power demanded." The Oracle's chains rattled as they settled back, already fading from our brief contact. "I have been here for three thousand years, neither dead nor truly alive, watching prophecies I cannot touch, unable to fulfill the purpose I was created for."
"That's horrifying."
"Yes." They smiled, and it was the saddest expression I'd ever seen. "And it awaits you if the Harbingers succeed."
I sank to the floor, the weight of this knowledge crushing. My hands were shaking, the blue markings pulsing erratically across my skin.
"Why show me this? Why not just let me figure it out on my own?"
"Because you needed to understand what you're fighting." The Oracle's form began to flicker, fading in and out of solidity. "The Harbingers will not simply try to control you. They willtry toperfectyou. Make you into the ideal Oracle—obedient, efficient, emotionless."
"How?"
"By severing what makes you human." They gestured, and new visions appeared.
I saw the Harbingers tearing holes in fate itself, creating wounds in reality. I saw futures where my protectors died, each one falling to protect me from threats that kept escalating. I saw myself, broken by their loss, accepting the Harbingers' offer just to make the pain stop.
And I saw the worst possibility, a future where I became unstoppable not through their manipulation, but through my own choice. Where the grief of losing Rook, Zane, Milo, and Fenric transformed me into something cold and merciless. Where Ichoseto become the weapon the Oracle had been, believing it was the only way to prevent more loss.
"I don't want any of that!" I scrambled to my feet, anger replacing fear. "I don't want to be a weapon, an Oracle, or whatever the hell you are!"
"You will." The Oracle's voice held absolute certainty. "When you understand what must end."
