Page 156 of Turncloak

Only now, under the rheumy light of a winter’s day, could Saffron properly discern the wand’s features. It was smooth, hard, the color of fresh snow—an extremely rare and ancient kind of whitebeam. Its surface was covered in various engravings, from rune-like symbols to Ancient Sarthi expressions she couldn’t translate, and the handle was a grooved cone of ascenite inset with thin gold rings.

Saffron reached out her hand, and Levan set the relic wand into it.

The world bleached white, and the Fifth Prophecy began.

63

• • • •

The Fifth Prophecy

It starts with an image.

Saffron Killoran sits atop the Vallish throne, an intricate fallowwolf-shaped crown nestled in her wild silver-blond curls, a weaverwick wand in her palm. Her cloak falls in rich swathes of purple velvet and gold satin. Her face is set with stony terror, her fingernails digging into the arm of the ancient seat.

The image widens.

By her side, on another throne, is Harrow Claver. He wears no crown, and though his cloak is the same unctuous purple velvet, it’s streaked with Foreseer bronze instead of Timeweaver gold. They wear matching engraved rings on their middle fingers, silver bands engraved with Ancient Sarthi.

Behind them in the throne room hangs a vast purple banner with an unfamiliar sigil, a white fallowwolf curled like a snake around a gold hourglass, its pupils spiraled like an Augur’s. Beneath the sigil, in formal letterplate, are the words: House Killaver.

The image widens again.

The throne room is carnage. A vast, opulent space hewn from pure ascenite—more ascenite than exists in the rest of the country, enough to dwarf even the Bloodmoon’s overflowing vaults. Yet it has not been enough to save them. Tapestries burn, and walls crumble, and the Palace echoes with the roars of violent battle. Petrified guards stand with wands raised, preparing to die defending their monarchs.

The image widens, pans out.

Atherin is under siege.

The Great Wards have fallen, and three armies have breached the city walls: the green-cloaked Bellandrians, the coral-cloaked Joribali, and the gray-cloaked Nyrøthi. The River Corven has been wielded like a weapon, lifted from its groove and washed through the city in a terrible bloody gush. Buildings have crumbled, and the streets are flooded with crushed and drowned bodies: men, women, children, babies. Piles of cloakless Ludders are stacked like sandbags fortifying a trench. Debris of wands and coins and tiny infant shoes scatter the surface of the water, the flotsam and jetsam of a desolated magekind.

The image narrows all the way to its beginning.

Saffron turns to Harrow. She looks both older and ageless. “We have to unmake now, while we’re still surrounded by ascenite.”

“How far?” he murmurs, hoarse with existential terror. “We’ve unmade so much. It never ends differently, and reality is growing frayed. If you’re not precise, you’ll cleave the fabric of the world in two.”

“So let it cleave. The world is ending anyway.”

Saffron lifts her weaverwick wand, climbs to her feet, and closes her eyes. Reluctantly, Harrow stands beside her, lacing his fingers through hers. Their matching rings glow like iron on a forge.

When she utters the word, there’s an air of finality to it, of resignation, of fear and self-loathing and utter, utter despair.

“Tempavicissan.”

There’s an almighty tearing sound, and the world falls away, and there the prophecy ends.

Saffron reeled backward, stumbled, fell. It all slotted into terrible place.

Sarcane didn’t hide the prophecy because it foretold her saving the world from war, nor because she was going to redeem the Timeweavers from their terrible slaughter and rehabilitate them into public life.

No, the prophecy was hidden because she was going to end the world.

Saffron lay still in the snow for several moments, trying to process the magnitude of what she’d just seen. A thousand questions spiraled through her mind, as dark and terrible as the drowned corpses on the future streets of Atherin.

Why will Harrow sit the throne beside me?

What will happen to Levan?