Vaedros studies me more closely now, his attention sharpening that suggests he is no longer observing surface behavior alone, but tracing the structure beneath it, following the patterns I have only just begun to recognize myself, and I expect him to press further, to demand explanation, to pull at the threads until something gives. He doesn’t.
He lets the silence hold instead, controlled, deliberate, leaving the space open rather than filling it, and that choice unsettles me more than pressure would have, because it removes the need to resist and replaces it with something far more dangerous.
The option to speak. He doesn’t need to ask. Whatever he sees is enough. That, more than anything, shifts something in me. Because he is not taking the information. He is waiting for it. Trust does not form through what is forced. It forms through what is withheld and still respected.
The realization settles uneasily, pressing against instincts that have kept me alive far longer than trust ever could, and I consider leaving it there, letting the silence remain intact, letting the structure between us stay exactly as it is.
Instead, I hear myself speak.
“There’s something else,” I say, the words quieter now.
His attention sharpens immediately, not outwardly, not in any way that would be obvious to anyone else, but I feel it in the stillness that follows, how his focus narrows without shifting position.
“When I see certain outcomes,” I continue, choosing each word carefully, measuring how much to reveal without understanding fully what I am describing, “they don’t feel the same as the others.”
A pause follows, brief but deliberate.
“In what way.”
“They feel… directed,” I say, the word settling with quiet resistance, because it is the closest I can come to something I cannot fully define. “Like something is pushing them into place before they happen.”
He doesn’t interrupt. So I keep going.
“And it’s always the same kind of outcome,” I add, my gaze shifting briefly away from him before returning, because saying it while holding his eyes feels like stepping into something I cannot take back. “The same version of you.”
That gets a reaction. His posture stills that is too precise to be natural, his attention locking onto mine with a focus that feels sharper than before, not aggressive, not confrontational, but intent that this matters more than anything I have said up to this point.
“What version,” he asks.
I hesitate.
“The one where you…” I stop briefly, recalibrating, choosing not to soften it because he wouldn’t believe it if I did. “Where you take everything from me. Every vision. Until there’s nothing left. And then you decide I’m no longer useful.”
The words are heavier than I expect, shaped not just by what I have seen but by the way those visions feel when they come, too sharp, too certain, too final.
“And those are the ones that feel… different,” I finish quietly. “Like there is some presence behind it. Not showing me the future. Choosing which future I see.”
For a moment, he says nothing. But the silence is not empty. Something tightens beneath it, subtle but unmistakable, and I feel it in how his gaze holds mine a fraction longer than necessary.
I study him more closely now, searching for something beyond the surface, for confirmation or contradiction, for any indication that what I’m sensing in those visions comes from him.
I don’t find it. That I find instead is something else. Recognition of the pattern. Not recognition of guilt. Recognition of a method: pressure applied through fear, using prophecy as the opening. That realization settles into place slowly, reshaping the way I interpret what I’ve been seeing.
So I shift my focus. Back to the work. Because whatever is influencing those visions…he might know it And that changes everything.
The forestahead opens into something unnatural, a break in the landscape where growth gives way to structure, where stone emerges through layers of decay, rising in fractured lines that still hold intention despite time’s attempt to erase it, and theshape resolves slowly into something deliberate, something that was never meant to belong to the wilderness now consuming it.
The artifact is there.
Close.
I can feel it. I don’t understand how, a pull that is not counting on sight alone, something deeper aligning with the same part of me that the visions occupy, as though recognition exists on a level I cannot name.
Then the vision deepens.
Fire follows.
It spreads outward from the structure in violent, uncontrolled waves, devouring everything in its reach, the forest itself bending under the force of it, recoiling as though it recognizes something fundamentally wrong in what has been unleashed, and within that destruction I see movement, figures cutting through the chaos with purpose rather than fear, their presence defined not by form but by power.