“Yes.”
Useful and dangerous. I step back, giving her room enough to breathe.
“Then listen carefully. Your visions are being influenced.”
She stares.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know your pattern. Fragmented outcomes. Contradictions. Physical cost tied to overload. What you described breaks that pattern cleanly. External pressure or altered conditions are more probable than sudden perfection. Shaped around what you already fear, then pressed into your sight as if it were inevitable.”
“You speak about my mind like a ledger.”
“I speak about survival.”
That quiets us both. I turn and crouch beside the fire, drawing lines in damp soil with a stick as I think aloud.
“The episodes worsen in regions with heavier distortion, basins, white groves, standing stones, dense thresholds. Certain terrain amplifies instability. We stop feeding it.”
She comes nearer despite herself, blanket still around her shoulders.
“You think changing route changes the visions?”
“I think reducing triggers improves odds.”
“You always reduce people to odds. And this still doesn't prove anything.”
“I also keep them alive.”
Another silence, less hostile than the first. When I look up, her expression has changed. Fear remains, yet it is now accompanied by something like reluctant relief.
She does not trust herself. That may be the only opening available.
I smooth the map parchment across my knee and redraw our intended course away from low hollows, stone circles, narrow choke points, and areas where sound or light behaved too unnaturally. Higher ground. Running water. Open canopy where possible. Fewer variables. Less pressure on whatever in her is currently being exploited.
“We take the western rise,” I say. “Longer route. Cleaner terrain.”
“That delays the artifact.”
“Yes.”
The single word surprises her. It surprises me less than it should.
She sinks onto a stone opposite the fire. “And if I see something there?”
“Then new rules apply.”
I meet her gaze and make each point unmistakable.
“Every vision is reported immediately.”
“Even fragments?”
“Yes.”
“Even if it makes no sense?”
“Yes.”