The vision came at midnight—unbidden and cruel.
Caelen was asleep, or as close to it as he ever got, when the world shifted.
One moment, he was in his cottage, Elira's soft breathing a steady rhythm.
The next, he was nowhere—suspended in a void where the air burned and the ground screamed.
He stood on a plain of cracked earth. Aerthalin stretched before him, but it was wrong. The sky was blood-red, streaked with ash, and the forests were gone, reduced to blackened stumps. Cities burned in the distance, their spires crumbling, and the wind carried cries—thousands of voices, woven into a single, endless wail.
Caelen's curse roared, the pain so vast it threatened to swallow him. He felt the earth itself grieving, its heart breaking under the weight of what was coming.
A figure stood at the horizon, cloaked in shadow, its eyes empty as the Hollow's. It didn't move, didn't speak, but Caelen knew it—the man who wasn't a man. The end of everything.
"You cannot carry it all," it said, its voice a blade in his mind. "You will break, and the world will burn."
Caelen tried to move, to scream, but the pain held him—a chain forged of every sorrow he'd ever felt. The ground split, fire erupting, and he saw Hearthollow consumed, its cottages ash, its people gone.
He saw Elira, her face pale, her eyes empty, her fire snuffed out.
"No," he choked, but the vision didn't care.
---
He woke gasping, the cottage dark, the scar on his chest burning.
Elira was beside him, her hand on his shoulder, her voice urgent.
"Caelen! What's wrong? You were screaming."
He couldn't speak. Not yet. The vision clung to him, its pain a living thing.
He stumbled outside, the cold air a slap against his skin, and sank to his knees in the dirt.
Elira followed, her worry a sharp note in the curse's chorus.
"Talk to me," she said, kneeling beside him. "What did you see?"
He forced the words out, each one a wound. "Fire. Everywhere. Aerthalin burning. Cities, forests, people—gone. And him. The one you spoke of. He was there, watching it happen."
Her face paled, but her voice was steady. "A vision. The temple's keepers had them, sometimes. Warnings from the heart of the world."
Caelen shook his head, his hands digging into the earth. "It wasn't a warning. It was a promise. I felt it, Elira. The earth itself was crying, and I couldn't stop it."
She grabbed his face, forcing him to meet her eyes. "You're not alone in this. Whatever's coming, we'll face it. Together."
Her words were a lifeline, but they couldn't erase the vision's weight.
The scar pulsed—a reminder of the prophecy he didn't want.
"What if I can't?" he whispered. "What if I'm not enough?"
"Then we'll break together," she said, her voice fierce. "But neighborliness isn't weakness, Caelen. It's courage."
He stared at her, the night silent around them. Her pain was still there, a storm in his chest, but so was her strength—a fire that burned brighter than his fear.
For the first time, he wondered if the vision wasn't just a warning of the end…
But a call to fight it.