The ground beneath me begins to quake. The roar of battle cries turns deafening as waves of soldiers appear from either side of the empty expanse, charging at each other with mad conviction. There are thousands—endless rows that swallow up the entirety of the green hills.
Spears and swords in hand, the soldiers meet. Death greets them one by one in the ugliest of ways.
That’s when I see Jace.
His face is contorted into a feral mask of death—his harsh, beautiful mouth snarling with razored fangs. Like an animal.
Heisdestruction. Heischaos—soaked in blood, massacring as easily as he draws breath. Each move is smooth and beautiful, like a lethal dance. I’m so mesmerized by him that I barely notice the soldier at his back. Not until his sword appears through Jace’s chest.
I wail, lurching forward as he falls to the ground, teetering on his knees, golden eyes rolling back in his head.
“Jace? No, no, no!” I struggle against Kylian, but his grip has me locked in place.
Blood bubbles from Jace’s lips, his chest pumping with ragged, labored breaths. Hot tears spill over my cheeks as the vision pans to the rest of the field. I stare and stare, trying to make sense of the scene.
All around are the bodies of my friends. Kai, Mar, Dover, Igrid, Sorscha…then an animal lying still on the blood-soaked battlefield. AnOrCat—its brilliant white coat stained a deep red, rusted chains strung around its neck. My pulse starts to thunder.
“It isn’t real,” I breathe, gripping the roots of my hair. “This isn’t real!”
“See for yourself.” Kylian releases me with a gentle nudge forward. My fingers brush past the glass, reaching right through it as if it were air. The outside world dissolves behind me as I enter the scene and crawl toward the limp creature.
No. Please, no.
My fingers close on his soft fur as I turn him over and take in his familiar features. Those beautiful brown eyes staring out from a lifeless corpse, unblinking.
I let out an anguished cry.
It’s Zadyn.
Spots dance in my vision as I literally start to see red.
I cradle the lifelessOrCatin my arms, my tears soaking his soft fur and dripping onto his matted blood.
“It hurts, doesn’t it? Knowing that your choice dooms your friends, your loved ones. That it sets in motion a war where thousands will die in your name.”
Zadyn’s body disappears from my grasp. I whirl around, staring out into a red-skyed wasteland.
This is your fate if you continue to resist,something whispers inside my mind.
The earth is scorched and angry, the vegetation turned to ash, with only a few stubborn tree trunks remaining. I smell decay. The scent of death that accompanies true discord.
It will be a war to end all worlds.
A war over me…
I can feel the emptiness in the air. There is no sign of life for miles. I wander aimlessly through the illusion of the abandoned desert. I wander until I am lost.
And in my heart, I know what I am seeing. I see a future that cannot be avoided.
I see the end of the world.
I never believed in fate.
In predestination. In a map woven from the fabric of life that could not be veered from or altered.
I never believed until I fell into this world. Until I bonded a dragon. Until I looked into the face of a king and saw my father. Until I fell in love and got my heart ripped open.
And now, to see my future played out before me like a movie on a big screen…it changes everything.
