Chapter Twenty-Two
Some say a Seer is born, blessed by the god who shaped them. But I’ve come to learn that blood magic can forge one too. Perhaps not quite the same, perhaps a little… darker.
In most kingdoms, Seers are revered. In some lands, they are treated as sacred beings.
Holy, almost. The wolverian territories, and the Desert Kingdom especially, place them on pedestals, as though they walk a step closer to the divine.
Drakonians, however, detest the idea. To them, only the Sun God may wield divine power, and any mortal claiming otherwise is an offence.
Phoenixians, ever the scholars, use their Seers for research, for analysis and probabilities, reducing visions to numbers and outcomes.
Typical. Wyverians rarely speak of Seers at all.
I doubt they worship them, or even value them.
There's a quiet suspicion in the way they regard those who claim glimpses of the future, as though instinct warns them not to trust what they cannot prove.
We witches though, we take our Seers very seriously. My mother always wished I’d been born with the gift. I could see the disappointment etched into her smile when it became clear I wasn’t.
Well…
Look at me now, Mother.
Be careful what you wish for.
Tabitha Wysteria
It was a most peculiar sight, wyverians making themselves at home within the ancient marshland dwellings of the witches.
An uneasy peace lingered like mist above the bogs, where wolverians prowled through the woods, returning with strange, twisted game slung over their shoulders.
Fires flickered across the land like scattered stars, their smoke curling into the dusk as meat was roasted and stories half-whispered beneath breath.
The villages closest to the western wall had been wholly overtaken by the army, their thatched homes now shelters for soldiers.
Some had already begun to drift deeper into witch territory, curious or cautious, eager to investigate lands steeped in shadow and spellcraft.
That evening, Ash once more found himself lost within the winding labyrinth of his own mind, travelling forward, always forward, to glimpse the child he had not yet raised but already loved with an aching devotion.
Increasingly, he slipped into quiet, forgotten corners to let the present fade into memory and possibility, seeking refuge in the past or the promise of a future still unwritten.
Yet no matter how far he wandered, no matter how deeply he cloaked himself in solitude, Adriana always seemed to find him.
The witch temple became his sanctuary, its air thick with old sorrows, its silence a balm to his frayed nerves.
The structure was avoided by most. Wolverians claimed it was haunted, cursed by the tormented wails of those who once wielded dark power.
Wyverians, meanwhile, were far too busy carving order from the wild to spare it much thought.
There, seated at the head of a great stone table long forgotten by time, Ash would close his eyes and drift, letting the weight of the temple and its history hold him steady as he slipped away from the world.
And, as she often did, Adriana would come.
She would find him seated in the gloom and drag him back to the realm of the living, insisting he join the others by a fire, if only to keep the cold of death at bay for one more night.
Footsteps echoed through the ancient hall, soft but certain.
Ash remained still, his golden eyes closed, attuned not to sight but to sound.
He listened as the steps moved lightly across the marble floor, now dulled and dirt-streaked, carpeted in the detritus of time—ash, leaves, and soil left by years of abandonment.
These were not Adriana’s tread; no, this was someone swifter, more graceful, a creature of the wild rather than the divine.
A chair scraped against stone to his right, and with a weary sigh, someone dropped into it.
Ash opened his eyes, a soft smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as Bryn Wynter appeared beside him, rubbing the sleep from his vivid blue eyes.
The young wolverian’s shoulder-length white hair was meticulously braided in the traditional style of his kin, each twist and knot a silent declaration of strength and skill.
The more intricate the braid, the more formidable the warrior.
Bryn sat tall, though his build was willowy and deceptively delicate.
Beneath his leathers, however, lay the taut muscle of one who had known a life of hunting and hardship, of chopping wood beneath snow-laden trees and surviving the merciless winters of the north.
Everything about him shimmered with an otherworldly grace, as if a white fox had shed its fur and donned mortal form.
His features were a study in contrast: sharp yet soft, fierce yet mournful.
‘I’ve come to ask ya something,’ Bryn said, resting his forearms upon the cold stone table.
‘Me papa’s ill. Crystallised lungs. It’s common back home…
our lungs slowly freeze from da inside out, until they shatter.
’ He sighed, letting his body fall back against the chair as his gaze searched Ash’s.
‘He’s been sick for years but it’s been da last few months that he’s got worse.
Couldn’t come to da battle. Bedridden, he is. And he’s getting worse each day.’
His fingers trembled, betraying the depth of his distress, and he swiftly tucked them beneath the table as if shame could hide sorrow.
‘We’re trapped here,’ he continued, quieter now, as though the temple walls might echo his hope too loudly. ‘But I need to know, Ash… when we get out, will he still be alive?’
Ash simply nodded, his silence full of understanding. He recognised the ache behind the prince’s words, the quiet terror of a man who fears the world will change before he can return to it.
‘I know ya’ve said before that ya can’t always explain things to us,’ Bryn said quickly, the words spilling out before his courage could falter.
‘And I know it’s only a handful of us who know ya can see da past and da future, and yer likely tired of us prodding ya with questions like we’re children.
’ He exhaled, resting his hands on the edge of the weather-worn table.
‘But I need to know this, Ash. For me people.’ His voice softened.
‘And becas… me papa’s second, Caldwell…’ Bryn hesitated, frowning.
‘I’m not sure I can trust him. If me papa dies while we’re trapped in this cursed land and I become king…
I don’t know what Caldwell might do. I fear he could act against me. ’
Ash studied the young prince. His heart ached for him.
Bryn, who bore more weight than most twice his age.
The lad had already lost so much, and there was still more to be taken from him, more sorrow curled like a viper in the shadows of his future.
Ash had seen it, had walked the bitter paths of time and returned with the cruel truths etched behind his eyes.
But he would not speak of it. Not yet. He would not shatter what peace Bryn still clung to. He would not condemn him with the knowledge of Wren Wynter’s fate, nor speak of what would befall the rest of the Wynters. It was not kindness. It was mercy.
Yet this much, at least, he could give.
‘Your father will die while you are t-trapped here,’ Ash said quietly.
Bryn did not move. But Ash saw the moment the words struck him, saw it in the sudden stillness of his limbs, in the tightening of his jaw, in the pain behind his glacier-blue eyes.
‘You will become k-king without even knowing it,’ Ash added gently.
Bryn bowed his head and gave the smallest of nods, the gesture heavy with grief.
Ash chose not to tell him that the illness would not be what claimed his father in the end. That the death awaiting him would be darker, more violent, and far more tragic. Some truths were too cruel to be spoken aloud.
‘I don’t really want to be king,’ Bryn confessed, a wistful smile curving his lips as his gaze turned glassy with unshed thought. ‘I’ve always dreamt of a quiet little hut in da north, just me and me wolves. I don’t know how to be a king.’
‘No one tru-truly knows how to be a king,’ Ash said, his voice soft, laced with the familiar falter of his stammer. ‘But I can tell you this. The fi-finest kings are often those who ne-never asked for the crown in the first p-place.’
Bryn’s smile deepened, sheepish and tinged with melancholy, and he gave a small nod.
‘Wren should’ve been queen,’ he said after a stretch of silence, his voice distant. ‘She’d have been far betta at it than I’ll eva be.’
Ash tilted his head, thoughtful, as if weighing the truth of that sentiment. At last, a faint smile tugged at his lips. ‘Well, you aren’t king yet.’
‘But ya are,’ Bryn countered quietly.
Ash felt his chest tighten at the words. Yes, he was the Fire King now, a monarch crowned in exile, ruler of a realm swallowed by ash and witchcraft. One day, perhaps, he might reclaim it. If the threads of fate wove in his favour. But for now...
‘Can a man be king of no-nothing?’ he mused aloud, more to himself than to Bryn. ‘I suppose he can.’
‘Is it true ya’ve seen da future?’ Bryn asked, one pale brow lifting with cautious curiosity. ‘They say ya’ve become a Seer of sorts.’
Ash inclined his head in solemn confirmation.
‘Have ya... have ya seen how we all die?’ Bryn’s voice was barely above a whisper.
Ash chuckled, leaning in with a mischievous glint in his golden eyes. ‘Do you wish to know how you d-die, Bryn Wynter?’
The wolverian’s eyes widened, and he shook his head at once. ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘No, I don’t think I do.’
‘Good.’ Ash nodded slowly. ‘For the f-future is a murky thing. We each carry within us both a radiant en-ending and a ruinous one. Fate may show us gli-glimpses, but it is our cho-choices that lead us down either path.’
‘And ya’ve seen both those paths for all of us?’ Bryn’s voice trembled with wonder, and a trace of dread.
‘I have s-seen it all,’ Ash whispered, as if uttering the secret might wake the very spirits of the past. He lifted his right hand. ‘One f-future, where the world is t-turned to ash.’ Then the left. ‘Another, where it endures.’
‘How do ya know which paths lead to ruin, and which to salvation?’ Bryn asked, frowning deeply.
‘I don’t,’ Ash replied, with the weary honesty of one who bears too much truth. ‘Not entirely.’
Bryn stood slowly, the weight of unspoken futures pulling on his limbs. But as he reached the threshold, he turned once more.
‘When I become king... will ya tell me?’ he asked.
Ash did not answer. Instead, he closed his eyes and let his mind drift to a place far from the crumbling temple, a memory of a young girl with golden hair, black wyverian horns and purple eyes, her laughter echoing like wind through the ruins of what once was.