It comes without restraint this time, a thin, steady line that I cannot fully stop before it betrays me, and I turn my head slightly, angling my face away from him under the pretense of examining the broken wall beside us, my hand rising just enough to catch it before it falls further, before it becomes something he cannot ignore. I am lucky he walked forward and didn't see my eyes glow.
Then I move again. Because he is watching.
“You stopped,” he says, his voice cutting through the quiet with that same measured precision he applies to everything.
“I’m fine,” I answer, too quickly, and I know he hears it, knows the shape of what I am avoiding even if he cannot yet see all of it.
His steps slow beside me.
“That’s blood,” he says.
I exhale once, controlled, steadying myself before I turn just enough for him to see that I am still standing, still moving, still functional, even as I press my sleeve briefly beneath my nose, wiping away what remains.
“It happens,” I say.
“That isn’t an explanation. You had a vision.”
“Yes,” I agree quietly, meeting his gaze before letting it drop again, careful, deliberate, “and you’re not getting one right now.”
Silence follows, but it is not empty. It sharpens, tightens, his attention settling fully on me that feels almost physical, like a hand closing around something fragile just to test if it will break.
“You expect me to ignore it,” he says.
“I expect you to trust that I know when it matters,” I reply, my voice low, steady despite the lingering ache behind my eyes, despite the way the vision still echoes at the edges of my thoughts, “and I will tell you when it does.”
His gaze does not leave me.
“And if I decide it already does?”
“Then you’ll ask again,” I say, “and I’ll still give you the same answer.”
The tension holds between us, stretched thin but unbroken, and I can see the calculation in him, the instinct to push, to take, to demand clarity where I am deliberately denying it. Then, unexpectedly, he lets it go.
“For now,” he says.
Agreement, not surrender. It is enough. I shift my head slightly, acknowledging it without making it larger than it is, and continue forward, matching his pace, keeping close enough to remain useful, controlled enough to remain unreadable. Inside, the vision still burns. But he does not get to see that. Not yet.
We move deeper into the ruin, and I let him take the lead more often than before, offering direction only when necessary. Withholding it would create suspicion, because I need him relying on himself, not on me. I need him making choices without my guidance, because every step closer to the artifact is a step closer to something I will not allow to happen.
I see the ruin differently now. Not as a place to navigate. As a weapon.
Every cracked column becomes a potential collapse. Every narrow passage a choke point. Every unstable section of ceiling a delay waiting to be triggered, and I map it all silently, storing each possibility, each advantage, each way I can slow him, stop him, if it comes to that.
Because it will.
The decision settles into me with a weight that feels almost calm. I will not let him take it. Not because I hate him. Not because I fear him. But because I have seen what happens if I don’t.
And yet, the thought does not come cleanly. It does not sit without complication, because the image of him standing alone in that vision does not leave me, not the destruction, not the aftermath, but him, unchanged in ways that matter, still controlled, still deliberate, still himself and not himself all at once.
I do not trust him. I cannot. But I do not want that future either.
Which means I am walking a line I do not fully understand, between stopping him and protecting him from something he does not even know. And that is far more dangerous than choosing a side.
“Which way?” he asks, pausing at a split in the structure where two corridors stretch into shadow, identical to anyone who cannot see beyond the present.
I step closer, just enough to appear engaged, just enough to maintain the illusion that I am still what he believes I am. Useful. Cooperative.
I glance left. Then right. I already know which path leads closer. I also know which one buys me time.