Two hundred and seventy years ago
(5th night of VeilMoon in the year 4947)
I grip the stone railing in the center of the moon balcony and inhale slow, meditative breaths, offering myself small words of support.
“Raefiya, you can do this… Again, I can do this again.”
Because staying up for the last three nights leading into the deep night of the VeilMoon and banging my mind against the closed door into the universe only served to drain my energy trying to get the door open.
Patience is not one of my virtues.
Persistence, however, is, and the weight in my chest tells me there’s something I need to see this moon. Something dark unfolding in the future that calls to my magic every waking breath. It’s like claws are running up and down the inside of my chest – my Seed awake and fighting for attention. Discomfort soon turns to pain, then pain to agony.
The walls around me are solid Silvari glass, tinted black to reflect the moon and completely seclude this balcony from the rest of the world. Helped by the fact that it is at the top of a tower on the eastern side of the Black Castle. Nothing but me and the night up here.
Me, the moon, and the universe waiting for a truth I’m not sure the world is ready for.
My fingers flex once more on the railing, one more deep breath and one more look at the moon before I close my eyes and knock on the universe’s door.
It opens and relief floods through me as I fall from the earthly plane into the stars. Too far from any worlds, nothing but endless black and an audience of lights and a book. History written for events that have not yet happened.
For a long moment I can’t react, just draw in pain-free lungfuls of air. The clawing sensation finally gone.
I did it.
I still have my body, like an echo of existence walking on air as I pace around a giant tome lying open before me. Its massive pages are stacked almost as tall as I am, just floating in the star-strewn nothing of the night.
I’m able to touch each and every page as I pace along the length of it, but I can’t change a single word. I know from experience that each page is the same scene, the same song in a thousand different instruments and overlaying beats. One moment in time that the universe is willing to let me see. Finally. After nights of trying to ease the desperate pull in my chest.
These will all be variations of what could be, and one of them will be. Just… which path am I willing to nudge the world onto?
I run a finger over the corner of the universe, stirring the book to life. The pages flip in quick succession, then suck me in and drop me into the future.
I’m in the forest surrounding the Black Castle. The trees are heavy on top with leaves ready to fall and on bottom with a mist that refuses to shift despite the sun sitting high.
The air is crisp, early autumn by the feel of it.
The road is marked by two wide cart wheel tracks but with a strip of wild grass down the middle. It could be one of a dozen roads into or out of or around the castle. The only reason I know for sure it’s the castle at all is because the dark turret of the highest tower is just visible to the south. Well, that narrows it down to five or six possible roads that I can think of.
I steady my magic then leap from page to page.
Forest. Forest. Forest. Always the same forest. Always the castle to the south. Always my feet land on a road, though the exact placing differs slightly, sometimes on a bend, sometimes amongst thick trees, sometimes near a small meadow.
Stomach churning, I stop the pages, settling into a random version of the day. Playing with a potential warning, putting words to this moment.
When the leaves sit heavy, the path through the forest will be fraught with danger – no, that will never do. Vague, even for me.
The weight in my chest says this is too important for ambiguity. That simply avoiding all roads and all forests every autumn for the next thousand years isn’t going to save anybody from whatever it is my magic is warning me about.
Okay, time to face the next bit.
I try to remind myself that all ProphecySeeds face the day when their magic calls them to witness something so intense that their Seed begins to tremble. Try, but it doesn’t help.
Voices drift through the trees, then two horses amble around the corner. Their hooves send the mist swirling with each well-placed step.
My Pax, young and full of life. His golden gaze is lit up by a beaming smile, his laugh lingering as my husband, Vidarr, recounts some story that involves big arm movements. They’re on the way to a hunt by the look of the bows on their backs. They always hunt with those bows. All my boys do, but they’re not all here – just Pax and Vidarr.
My chest tightens, constricts.
“No,” I gasp. Please no.
Not this. Not them. Not yet.
But I can’t move. Can’t stop watching.
I need to know.
A hum fills the air, the warning that this scene holds the key to the moment paths will separate and the reality written by the universe is about to unfathomably split.
A tear is already in the corner of my eye, knowing in my soul the agony to come, as I pause the story. Then leap from page to page and note the differences over a hundred different versions of the same moment in time. Each moment frozen. Each one looks perfect and innocent – and just minutes from being broken.
Vidarr and Pax, or Seth, or Roarke, or my Killian grown into a young man, combinations of them, all of them. Never none of them. On horses. On foot. Hunting or returning from town, or just exploring. Always laughing as they move through the pattern of shadows cast by vibrantly colored leaves and dormant trees.
Always my boys.
Every single future.
They’re always here.
Finally, stomach rolling and soul trembling, I let the next part unfold.
The Veil rips open right beside them. One moment, it’s forest, and the next, there’s a tear, the black of the Aeons beyond.
Pax and Vidarr startle, hesitating as the attack rushes forth. They manage to draw their short swords, but they’re not armed for this – the long bows on their backs are useless. Outmanned and out-armed, I barely manage to draw in a desperate breath before seeing their blood spill.
They fight hard, killing with precision, but the attackers don’t slow, don’t care how many of their own are injured or killed – they just keep coming. Armed with swords, spears, axes, and poisonous Veil whips. The damage is instant. Burning, searing, decaying wounds from the moment they touch Vidarr, his body lacking any immunity.
Pain will come through the Veil, my thoughts stammer, reaching for my only weapon – a warning.
Shaking, it takes me three attempts to pause the fighting. I can’t halt the real scene in the future, just this vision.
Pax half slung from his horse, one hand gripping the saddle as two men with ash-smeared faces and blood-smeared hands try to wrestle him to the ground. Their mouths are pulled back in sneers, eyes wide and bloodshot, skin scarred with old whip lashings. All the marks of Aeon slaves. A third man is rushing in, sword raised, seconds from cleaving Pax in two.
And Vidarr’s already on the ground, four men around him with swords ready to stab downward to end the battle.
I turn and leap through the pages, through the realities. My corporeal legs are barely able to keep me standing, and my vision is blurred by tears that I don’t even bother holding back. The attack is never from the same direction or even in the exact same location, but the sheer number of men and women that spill from the Aeons never changes. In thousands of variations, grimm linger in the background, but they never step forth.