“The version of you that tells the truth.”
“I haven’t started yet.”
He exhales once through his nose, half amusement, half warning, then turns back to secure the packs redistributed fromthe shaken beast. Argument suspended, not resolved. With him, suspension may be more dangerous.
We continue beneath a canopy growing thicker with every mile until daylight arrives in green-filtered ribbons and the world smells of moss, old rain trapped in bark, fungal rot, and the mineral chill of unseen water moving through stone. Insects drone in hidden swarms. Branches click together high above like teeth testing each other’s strength. I feel the forest watching not through eyes but through alterations, paths subtly angled, shadows lengthened where no cloud passes, distances refusing consistency.
The second vision announces itself more violently than the first. A pulse of light flashes across my sight so suddenly that I nearly miss my step, and I know at once that if he turns now he will see my eyes betray me. I force myself upright and grip the nearest branch.
“I need to stop,” I say.
“We stopped ten minutes ago.”
“How fortunate that time continues.”
I move off the trail again before he can question me further, this time not waiting for distance, only enough privacy to spare myself the humiliation of collapsing directly at his feet.
The vision opens wide. I see Vaedros choosing speed over caution at a fork where three deer trails divide around a standing pool black as polished glass. In that future he dismisses my hesitation, takes the rightmost trail, and triggers a snare of living vine that jerks him upward hard enough to wrench his shoulder from socket while thorned creepers close around his throat. I see him cutting free too late. I see blood striking bark in bright arcs. I see his confidence become burden.
Then the image fractures and another crashes over it. Same fork. Same pool. Different path. Hidden archers in trees I cannot yet smell.
Then another.
We never reach the fork at all because something finds us first. The futures collide, overlap, devour each other. My eyes burn like open flame. Blood runs warm over my lip. The pain in my skull turns the world thin and distant.
I stagger back toward the trail and lose balance before I can hide it.
Vaedros catches my elbow before I hit the ground. His hand is firm, steady, real in a world that still feels broken into pieces.
He says something I do not hear. I try to pull away.
The motion sends another wave of pain through my head, and I make a sound I hate for how weak it is.
“Hold still,” he says, closer now.
I blink until his face sharpens into focus. He has guided me against the trunk of a cedar, one hand still at my arm while the other lifts a clean strip of cloth from inside his coat.
“I don’t need?—”
“You’re bleeding onto my road.”
He tilts my chin with two fingers before I can object and presses the cloth beneath my nose. His touch is careful enough to unsettle me more than roughness would have.
His eyes study every reaction I fail to hide.
“What did you see?” he asks quietly.
“Too much.”
“For once, an honest answer.”
The headache pounds with each heartbeat. I hate that he is close enough to hear it in my breathing. I hate that part of me notices the resin scent on his gloves, the warmth of him against the cold air, the impossible composure with which he treats my weakness as information rather than spectacle.
I hate, most of all, that I do not move away immediately.
The touch detonates another layer of sensation, cold metal rings beneath his gloves, pulse steady despite exertion, the faintresin scent of the salve he used on the torn sleeve, and a flash not of future but instinctive awareness of how easily those hands could steady or ruin.
I wrench free too quickly.