31
AERYN
The world feels different after the ruin. Not quieter. Not calmer. Just… stretched.
As if everything that was contained has started to move at once, pulling in directions that don’t align cleanly anymore. Before I see it I feel it, in the pressure in my head, in the way the air seems heavier when I try to focus too far ahead.
The visions don’t come cleanly here. They fracture.
I sit near the cave entrance, one knee drawn up, fingers resting lightly against the ground as if that will anchor me to something real while I sort through what isn’t. The morning light filters in unevenly, catching on dust and stone, shifting every time the wind moves outside.
Behind me, Vaedros is awake. I don’t need to look to know it.
His presence is sharper now, more contained, like something that has been forced into stillness but hasn’t accepted it yet. He hasn’t interrupted. Not once.
That tells me everything. I close my eyes. The future doesn’t open. It splinters.
Velkiron moves first in most paths. Not carefully. Not strategically. They expand. Fast. Too fast. Their forces spreadoutward from multiple points, trying to lock down territory they don’t fully understand, pushing toward anything that might lead them back to the artifact.
It fails. Not immediately. But it fails.
In some paths, they collide with Xalith directly. In others, they arrive too late, chasing something that has already moved beyond them. Either way, their reach exceeds their control.
Overextension. I follow the thread further. Xalith doesn’t slow down either. He pushes forward with the artifact, testing it, forcing it into use before understanding it, and every time he does, something shifts. Not always visibly. Not always immediately. But it spreads.
The pattern is consistent. Power taken. Power used. Consequence delayed.
I exhale slowly and open my eyes.
“They’re both making the same mistake,” I say.
Vaedros doesn’t respond right away, but I feel his attention settle fully on me.
“How so?” he asks.
I turn slightly, enough to meet his gaze without fully leaving my position. “Velkiron is expanding too quickly. They’re trying to control something they don’t understand. Xalith is doing the opposite. He’s forcing it forward without control at all.”
“And that benefits us how?”
“It doesn’t,” I say. “Not yet.”
I let the silence sit for a moment, then close my eyes again. There’s something else. Something quieter. Harder to reach.
The visions shift again, slower this time, less chaotic, like a current running beneath everything else. I follow it carefully, narrowing my focus until the noise drops away just enough to isolate it.
House Zethon.
They don’t move. They watch. In most paths, they remain distant, untouched by the chaos between Velkiron and Xalith, their forces held back, their presence minimal.
But not in all of them. In some, something changes. A trigger. I follow it. The artifact. Not its use. Its origin. Something tied to it. Something that matters specifically to them.
The pressure spikes too fast this time.
It doesn’t build gradually the way it usually does, doesn’t give me space to adjust or pull back cleanly. It hits all at once, sharp and blinding, the warmth spreads before I register the cause, blood slipping past my lip, copper cutting through the air.
I don’t move. Not immediately. I’m still holding the thread, still trying to force one more piece of it into clarity before it breaks completely.
Then his hand is on my wrist. Firm. Grounding.