19. Aeryn
AERYN
The forest does not warn me this time. There is no slow tightening behind my eyes, no creeping distortion of sound or light that signals the fracture before it comes.
One moment I am walking beside Vaedros along a narrow descent where roots twist through damp soil and the air carries the clean scent of pine and distant water, and the next the world tears open without permission, without preparation, without mercy.
It does not split. It collapses. Everything floods at once.
I am no longer standing in one place, in one body, moving through one moment.
I am in dozens, then hundreds, then more than I can count, each one pressing against the others, each one demanding attention, each one ending differently and yet somehow converging toward the same inevitable sense of loss that builds beneath them all like a tide.
Vaedros stands before me in one future, his blade buried in my chest, his expression calm, resolved, untouched by regret as my blood spreads across his hands.
In the next, he is dragging me to my feet, one arm around me, his voice sharp with urgency as something behind us collapses, shielding me with his body as debris falls.
Then again, his hands choking me.
Then again, his hand pulling me back from the edge of a drop I never saw.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The visions do not sequence.
They do not separate.
They overlap so violently that I cannot tell which comes first, which follows, which replaces which. His face becomes a constant through all of them, shifting between savior and executioner so quickly that the distinction begins to lose meaning.
Pain detonates behind my eyes. I stagger.
Reality tries to reassert itself, but the visions refuse to release me cleanly this time.
They cling, smear across the present, bleeding into what I can see and hear until the forest itself feels uncertain, unstable, wrong like it goes beyond the usual distortions.
And beneath it all…Something else. A presence.
A pressure that is not part of the forest, that does not move like the shifting patterns I have learned to navigate, that instead pushes, presses, directs, as though the visions are no longer simply unfolding but being guided toward something I cannot yet understand.
Vaedros is saying something. I hear his voice. I do not understand the words. The ground shifts again, or I do, and then I am falling.
I do not hit it.
His hands catch me before the impact, one at my back, the other bracing my shoulder, steadying me with a force that feels almost too solid against the instability tearing through me. I try to pull away, something sharp and panicked rising through the haze.
“Don’t—”
The word breaks apart before it finishes.
“You’re not standing,” he says, and there is no patience in it now, no measured tone, only something firm and unyielding that cuts through the chaos in a way nothing else can.
“I can?—”
I cannot. The attempt to prove it ends with the world tilting violently to one side, my vision darkening at the edges until everything narrows into fragments of light and shadow that refuse to hold still.
His arm tightens around me. Then I am lifted.
The shift is sudden enough that I cannot even process it, the ground dropping away entirely as he pulls me against him with no regard for protest, one arm beneath my knees, the other at my back, holding me with absolute certainty.
“No,” I manage, the word weaker than I intend, my hand pushing uselessly against his shoulder. “Put me down.”
“No.”
Flat and final.
I try again, because resistance is instinct, because control is the only thing that has kept me functional this long, because letting him do this feels dangerously close to something I cannot afford.
“I’m fine?—”
“You’re barely conscious,” he cuts in, moving already, steps steady, unhesitating despite the terrain. “Save the argument for when you can stand without collapsing.”
I try to push against him again, and this time the motion sends another wave of dizziness crashing through me so violently that my fingers lose strength halfway through the attempt. The world flickers. My head drops forward.
His grip shifts. Tighter. More secure.
“Stop fighting it,” he says, lower now, closer, the words directed at me, sounding less like command and more like something else I do not have the clarity to define. “You’re making it worse.”
“I don’t need?—”
“You do.”
The certainty in it leaves no room for argument.
I hate that. I hate more that he’s right.
The forest moves around us as he carries me, branches brushing against his shoulders, boots steady against uneven ground, each step grounded in a way I cannot replicate right now.
My hand ends up fisted in the fabric at his chest without conscious decision, holding there because letting go feels like it would send me back into whatever is waiting just beneath the surface.
My breathing does not slow. Another vision slams into place.
We reach a clearing ahead where the ground opens into smooth stone, safe, stable, easy passage forward. I see us crossing it without issue. I see the path continuing. I see no threat.
Then the image shatters.
The same clearing. The same stone. Vaedros stepping forward, and the surface collapsing beneath him into a hidden pit lined with sharpened stakes, his body striking hard enough to break bone before I can reach him.
Then another. We never reach the clearing because something attacks from the side first.
My head spins. The futures will not settle. I cannot tell which one is real. I cannot tell if any of them are. Fear makes the decision for me.
“Stop,” I say sharply, grabbing Vaedros’s arm before he can take the next step toward the clearing.
He halts immediately, eyes snapping to my face. “Did you see something?"
“Not that way,” I say, forcing the words through the noise in my head. “We go around.”
He studies me, searching for precision.
“There’s a collapse ahead,” I add quickly. “Hidden.”
That part might be true. It might not. I do not know anymore. His gaze lingers a fraction longer, weighing, measuring, deciding.
Then he nods once.
“Show me.” he said and lowered me slowly to step down.
I turn left, away from the clearing, forcing my body into motion before doubt can paralyze me completely.
The alternative path is narrower, less defined, choked with low branches and uneven ground that dips and rises unpredictably.
It feels wrong immediately, the kind of wrong that sits heavy in the chest rather than sharp in the mind.
Vaedros follows without question. That should reassure me. It does not.
The forest closes tighter around us. Light dims beneath thicker canopy. The air grows damp again, carrying the faint sour scent of stagnant water hidden somewhere nearby. My skin prickles with unease that no longer belongs solely to instinct.
I made the wrong choice. I know it before the danger reveals itself.
The ground ahead looks solid, covered in leaf litter and low moss, but the weight of the air shifts, subtle and unnatural, and before I can form a warning?—
It gives way. Not a collapse downward. A rupture outward.
The earth splits open in a violent surge, something massive forcing its way through from beneath, soil and roots exploding upward in a spray of dark debris.
A body follows, thick and armored, plated in dull chitin that reflects no light, its form coiling as it emerges, jaws opening wide enough to swallow a limb whole.
I react too late, but Vaedros does not.
His hand closes around my upper arm with crushing force, yanking me backward just as the creature’s strike tears through the space where I had been standing. The impact of his pull sends me off balance, my heel catching on uneven ground, and for a split second I am falling?—
Then his arm is around me, hauling me upright, pivoting my body behind his without hesitation.
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.
His expression shifts, confusion cutting through the anger for a brief moment. “Of course I did.”
“You didn’t hesitate.”
“No.”
“Why?”
The question slips out.
He stares at me, as though the answer should be obvious.
“Because you were in the way,” he says.
I shake my head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know,” he replies.
But he does not elaborate. And that absence feels heavier than any answer he could have given.
I stand there, caught between what I saw and what just happened, between the certainty of the visions and the reality of his actions, and the two refuse to align in any way I can reconcile.
My fear tells me one thing. The truth in front of me tells me another. And I no longer know which one is more dangerous to believe. If we assume that the fear is leading me and not the presence I felt.
“You know what?” he says, voice dangerously calm. “I am done with this. You are coming with me. We need to talk.”
Before I can answer, before I can even decide whether to fight him or flee, he bends, lifts me from the ground, and starts carrying me away.