The creature lunges again.
Vaedros shifts. Not away. Forward. He intercepts the movement, blade flashing as he drives himself into the creature’s path, redirecting its strike away from me at the cost of placing himself directly in its reach. The impact catches him across the side, a glancing blow that still carries enough force to send him staggering a half-step, breath leaving him in a sharp exhale.
My stomach drops. The vision. This is it. This is the moment. Except?—
He saved me, not betrayed.
He recovers instantly, feet planting, body already moving again before the creature can follow through. His blade arcs upward, finding the softer joint beneath the creature’s plated neck, cutting deep enough to slow it, not enough to kill.
“Move!” he snaps.
I move. The fight becomes motion. He drives the creature back step by step, controlling its direction, forcing it to turn, to expose vulnerable angles while keeping himself between it and me with ruthless precision. I see openings flicker through the chaos, fragments of possible outcomes breaking through the noise just long enough to act on.
“Left!” I call.
He shifts left without looking.
“Low strike!”
He drops, blade sweeping across the creature’s lower limbs, severing one cleanly.
It shrieks, the sound vibrating through the ground, through my bones, through the fractured edges of the visions still clinging to my mind.
“Now!” I shout.
He finishes it. The final strike drives through the exposed joint, deep and precise, and the creature collapses in on itself with a heavy, shuddering crash that sends a tremor through the earth beneath our feet.
Silence follows.
Vaedros stands still for a moment, chest rising and falling hard, blood darkening the fabric at his side where the earlier strike caught him. Then he turns slowly. And the expression on his face is not controlled. It is anger.
“What was that?” he asks.
But it's not a question, more like a demand. I swallow, the taste of iron still lingering in my mouth from the vision.
“I—”
“You redirected us,” he cuts in, stepping closer. “Away from a path you claimed was unstable.”
“It looked safe,” I say, the words weak even to my own ears.
“It was safe,” he snaps. “Until you chose otherwise.”
The accusation lands harder because it is true.
“I saw it collapse,” I insist. “I saw you fall?—”
“And instead you led us directly into something that nearly killed you.”
“Nearly,” I echo, grasping at the word.
“That is not a margin I accept.”
Silence stretches between us, heavy with everything neither of us is saying. I watch him. At the blood on his side. At the way he is still positioned slightly between me and the fallen creature, even now.
The visions flash again in my mind. Him killing me. Him saving me. Both equally vivid. Both equally real.
“You stepped in front of it,” I say quietly.