Page 91 of The First Scar
"Don't," she said without looking up.
"I didn't say anything."
"Your face is saying plenty."
I let my eyes close again, a small smile tugging at my mouth despite everything.
Some mysteries could wait until morning.
But, morning came with the weight of a thousand eyes I hadn't yet faced.
I was still pulling on my boots when Serenya spoke, her voice carrying that careful neutrality she used when delivering news she knew I wouldn't like.
"The Seer Twins had a vision last night. About you. About what happened in the ring."
My fingers stilled on the laces. "And?"
"And people found out." She didn't look at me. "Everyone knows about the prophecy."
Of course they did. Because privacy was apparently a luxury the fates had decided I didn't deserve.
I finished with my boots and stood, rolling the tension out of my shoulders. It didn't help. Nothing was going to help except getting through this day one breath at a time.
"Let's just go eat," I muttered. "Get it over with."
Serenya nodded and pulled back the cloth that served as our door.
Dreadscale was waiting on the other side.
He stood against the opposite wall, arms crossed, those unsettling tattoos shifting along his skin in the dim torchlight. We locked eyes and nodded to each other—he pushed off from the stone and fell into step beside me as we started toward the mess hall.
He moved with a silent, steady presence that asked nothing and offered everything.
I understood what it meant. After yesterday—after the collision, the fracture, the way my marks had nearly torn reality apart—he knew I was ready. Ready to stop running. Ready to learn. And Dreadscale had never been the type to let someone lie to themselves comfortably.
The walk to the mess hall felt longer than usual. Or maybe that was just the dread pooling in my stomach.
The noise hit me first—the familiar clatter of tin plates, rough laughter echoing off stone. Normal sounds. Safe sounds.
They died the moment I stepped through the entrance.
Heads turned. Conversations stuttered and stopped. The laughter cut off mid-breath. In the silence, every sound in the cavern sharpened—water dripping deep in the rock, the hiss of fat in the cook-fire, a spoon hitting the floor and no one bending to pick it up.
Then the whispers started.
I grabbed a plate from the stack and kept moving, jaw set, shoulders back. Porridge. A heel of bread. My hands steady because I made them steady.
The whispers followed me like shadows—hushed and edged, slithering between the tables, impossible to escape.
"—tethered to the Veil's fracture—"
"—saw the whole cavern flicker, like reality itself was—"
"—what she chooses, the world becomes—"
The Seer Twins' words, passed from mouth to mouth until they'd become gospel. I didn't know what they meant. I wasn't sure I wanted to.
Brannick stood near the cook-fires, his broad back turned toward me. One hand gripped his mug like he was trying to strangle it—knuckles white.
