The air tightens, not visibly, but enough to register.
“And what exactly is it reaching for?” he asks.
This is the moment. I don’t hesitate.
“Hazeran. The artifact is the gate. The Drazharel bloodline is the handle. Hazeran is what’s pulling from the other side. And seers are vulnerable because they already look through possible outcomes. He used that opening to influence my visions before the artifact was fully claimed.”
No one speaks immediately. No one moves. The reaction is there, contained but unmistakable, carried in the stillness that follows, in the way attention sharpens without shifting outward.
“You understand what you’re claiming,” the commander says.
“Yes.”
“And you’re certain.”
“Yes.”
His eyes follow me, searching for weakness, for uncertainty, for anything that would allow him to dismiss this as exaggeration or misinterpretation.
“Evidence,” he says.
I step forward. The pressure hits before I fully reach for it, sharp and immediate, building behind my eyes like something forcing its way through instead of waiting to be let in. I don’t stop it this time. I let it come.
My vision fractures.
The pass remains in front of me, but it doesn’t hold. It breaks apart under something I can’t see directly, the structure beneath it collapsing inward, lines forming where none exist, movement threading through spaces that shouldn’t allow it. Zethon territory doesn’t fall to an external force. It turns on itself. Systems fail. Boundaries distort. What was stable becomes the point of failure.
The artifact sits at the center. Used. Again. And again.
Each use widening the connection, pulling something closer that should never have been reachable in the first place, thinning whatever barrier still exists between presence and form.
Pain follows.
Sharp enough to blur the edges of everything else. I taste blood before I register it, something warm slipping past my lip as the vision pushes further than I let it.
I cut it off. The pass returns. I’m still standing.
The commander hasn’t moved, his eyes fixed on me.
“What was in your vision?” he asks.
I wipe the blood from my mouth with my hand before answering.
“Your territory collapsing from inside its own structure,” I say. “Not from invasion. From failure.”
His gaze narrows slightly.
“Specific.”
“It starts at the artifact,” I continue. “Not where it is. Where it’s used. Every time it’s used, it reaches further. It doesn’t stay contained.”
“You’re projecting outcomes.”
“Yes.”
“Based on incomplete data.”
“No,” I reply. “Based on repetition.”
