Chapter Twenty-Five Mathias #2
The coat fell first, then the layers beneath, dropped without fuss onto the dark sand like she was shedding not just fabric but something heavier.
Her bare feet sank into the wet earth as she walked forward, slow and sure, and when the water touched her toes, she didn’t flinch – only waded in, deeper with each step, until the waves kissed her knees, then her thighs, and then gathered around her like an old friend.
Mathias sank into a crouch at the edge of the slope, elbows on his knees, and let his gaze follow the shape of her – pale skin silvered by the sun, hair swept back in loose gold ribbons by the wind and salt, her figure folding into the glitter of the sea until she looked like something half-made of it.
She glanced at him once, then turned away, embracing the waves as they washed over her.
Whatever it was – an act of defiance or release – it was hers alone.
Mathias let his gaze drift just past her, to where sunlight broke in scattered lines across the water and the sea pulled against the shore in a slow, deliberate rhythm.
He’d meant the gesture as a kindness, but now that he watched her wading out with that soldier’s steadiness still in her spine, he understood it had been more than that.
She was not just cleansing skin; she was finding the edges of herself again – not the heir, not the weapon, not the orphaned daughter of ghosts – just the woman left beneath.
And for all her poise, he saw the toll of it too.
The fatigue in her limbs that didn’t come from sleepless nights alone.
The way her shoulders rounded as the waves caught her, as if the weight she carried didn’t lift but shifted.
There was no fixing that. No salve or spell or clever word to lighten what had been laid upon her—only the simple act of letting her carry it, in her own time, without tightening the reins.
So he stayed where he was, just watching, as the sea rose to meet her.
He blinked once, slow, as the sunlight fractured over the water – and the world stilled.
Not in some grand tremor of revelation, but in that peculiar way time sometimes folds in on itself, subtle as a breath caught mid-sentence.
The sea gleamed too bright. The gulls’ cries rang thin in his ears.
And all at once, he was no longer on the shore.
Flame.
An all-consuming blaze roared and writhed, licking up into a sky torn open by smoke.
It devoured stone and bone alike, swallowing banners, names, and oaths that had once held meaning.
The scent of it flooded his lungs, thick with scorched flesh and something worse – something final.
A crown tumbled from above, rimmed in fire, and struck the earth with a sound that cracked like thunder.
His hands were stretched toward it, useless.
His open-torn chest burned, blood steaming as it met the heat.
And overhead, the stars – merciless, cold – watched with all the care of distant gods long tired of the woes of men.
It was the same vision. The one that had first torn through him like a blade to the spine. Every Seer was shown their own end, and this was his – unchanged, but clearer now, sharpened.
He saw her.
Not yet claimed by the fire, not yet wearing its full weight, but moving through it as though it had always been hers.
Eyes bright, mouth set, her skin aglow with something stronger than wrath – a promise still unspent.
The blaze curled around her like it knew her, circling, waiting for the final spark that would let it burn unbound.
And there, in the measured space between her steps, the knowing came – drawn from the pull of the Sight, leading him toward the heart of what must be.
He saw it as plainly as the smoke curling above them: the cost was his life.
Not in the crude way of a blade or a fall, but in the way the Sight allowed him to understand it – his ending the key, the hinge upon which her power would turn.
She would never choose it. She would never take that last spark for herself.
But if it was given – if it was offered – the fire would crown her entire.
And somewhere in the hollow between heartbeats, he felt the answer settle into him, as certain as the earth beneath his feet.
Perhaps this was the madness they all spoke of, the fate said to claim every Seer in the end.
Even so, it did nothing to loosen his resolve or shift what had already been set in motion.
Grief moved through Mathias – not for himself, but for the days he would never see, for the woman who would ascend from that fire with no one left to meet her in its light.
Beneath it lay something steadier: the choice already made, the sacrifice already given, and with it a bone-deep certainty.
She would rise, and when she did, it would be over him.
If this was the nature of his purpose, he would carry it to the end – eyes open, heart unflinching.
But for now, in this brief and stolen peace, he watched the sea gather around her limbs and held that certainty close, not as a burden, but as a vow.
The sea surged in his ears again, pulling him back – salt and wind replacing smoke and blood. He exhaled once, long and slow, grounding himself in the weight of his own body, the slope of his knees beneath his arms, the shifting drag of the tide.
“Mathias?” Her voice came soft over the water, raised just enough to reach him, coaxing him back from where his thoughts had carried him. “Where did you go?”
He lifted his head. She was shoulder-deep now, the sea curling around her in silver-edged folds, her arms at her sides, matching the slow movement of the waves, the faintest suggestion of a smile tugging at her mouth.
“Come back. And come in,” she said then, and for the first time in days, her voice carried something close to warmth.
He stood without a word, the weight of the vision still faintly humming behind his eyes, and stepped toward the tide.
Water lapped at his boots. The chill seeped through at once, but he made no move to stop.
He walked in fully clothed, coat and all, until the waves touched his knees and the cold began to really bite.
Ara’s eyes followed his approach, and her brow arched. “You have me at a disadvantage,” she said, dry as sea wind, but with the gentle jingle of amusement in her words.
Mathias huffed – not quite a laugh, but something close – and reached up to undo the clasps at his collar.
The coat came off first, heavy with sea-damp and too many days of wear, followed by the linen shirt, tugged free and dropped without care onto a jut of stone above the tide line.
She turned as he reached for the fastenings at his belt – not out of modesty, exactly, but something akin to grace – and he gave her the moment before stepping into the water again, the waves drawing around his legs like they’d been waiting.
He waited until her shoulders tilted away before stepping free of the last of it – and let the sea take the rest.
The cold water welcomed him and gripped his skin, sharp and bracing, but he moved through it all the same – wading out until the shore was no longer beneath his heels and the world held only salt and breath and her just ahead, half-turned, golden and pale beneath the noon light.
The General tilted her head to glance at him from the corner of her eye, and a flicker of a grin ghosted her mouth – sharp, amused, fleeting.
“Not quite the vision I imagined when I first laid eyes on the Seer of Tirn’vahl,” she said, the words curling between them like wind through tall grass.
“Bit less mystic, bit more goose-pimpled fisherman.”
Mathias gave a quiet, obliging huff and let the chill water wash over his shoulders, teeth gritted only slightly against the bite. “And here I thought I was disarming,” he murmured, half to her, half to the horizon.
For a while, they let the sea speak between them – the push and pull of waves, the creak of driftwood carried in from faraway shores. Then, softer, without turning toward her: “You don’t have to say anything. Not unless it wants out.”
She didn’t answer at first. Only floated there, shoulder-deep in the shifting light, her arms folded across herself as though bracing against more than the cold.
And then she said, not looking at him, not quite looking anywhere, “I’ve never said it to anyone before.
And I don’t quite know if I want to say it now. ”
“Then don’t.” Mathias said, turning to her just in time to catch the shimmer of a single tear – a silver thread tracing the line of her cheek, bright against the sunlight and gone just as quickly.
She felt it then – the way his eyes held her a beat too long – and looked away sharply, brushing a hand across her cheek with a scoff that didn’t quite land.
“Bloody salt in the wind,” she muttered, too quick, too practiced.
But the humour faded as fast as it came, and for a moment she only swayed there, waves lapping at her shoulders, the water carrying the weight of the silence she didn’t fill.
Then: “Of all the things she did… the years she stole, the stories she twisted – there’s one thing I still can’t put down.
One thing that… that cuts deeper than the rest.” Her voice caught, not with tears but with the effort of choosing the right words and letting them live outside her chest.
Mathias didn’t press her. He only turned slightly in the water, just enough to face her more fully, though he kept his distance.
No clever retort, no offer of comfort dulled by well-meaning platitudes – just the weight of his presence.
Ara drew in a breath, as if testing if it would hold, then let it out in a long thread that seemed to ripple the space between them.
Her fingers drifted beneath the surface, tracing slow circles in the foam.