Nico
"Nico? You alright? You've been staring at your hand for a mile."
Elijah's voice hit me like a physical blow. I snapped my head up, my heart hammering against my ribs. I looked at him—really looked at him. His jaw was set, his sword sheathed at his hip, his face unmarred by the blood and dirt I had seen just moments ago.
To my right, Eliza was quietly scanning the treeline, her fingers loosely resting near her quiver. She was breathing. Her throat was intact.
Fifteen minutes.
"I'm fine," I choked out, my voice sounding incredibly thin. I quickly focused my mind, wishing the Vessel of Nullion out of sight. With a faint shimmer, the cold obsidian lotus vanished, safely stored away inside the amulet's pocket dimension.
Closing my eyes for a fraction of a second, I focused on the artifact around my neck. Ren hadn't lied. I could feel the localized spatial distortion inside the charm. Along with the vessel, there were several pouches of gold coins, three sets of durable leather armor, and survival essentials: waterskins, a canvas tent, and a clean change of clothes for each of us. It was exactly what we needed to survive a long journey.
"We need to stop," I said sharply, halting dead in the middle of the path.
Eliza stopped instantly, her eyes narrowing as she turned to face us. "Stop? Nico, we're barely half a day's hike from Aaron's Reach. If we stop now, we risk being caught in the open after dark."
"No, you don't understand," I said, stepping closer to both of them, my mind racing through the math. We walked for two days. We ran for a few minutes before the ambush. The clearing is just ahead. "We aren't going to be caught after dark. We are being hunted right now. The Shadow Guild—the men you call the Shadow Guild, they're actually the Veilborn. There are four of them. They're already ahead of us, waiting to flank us near the clearing."
Elijah frowned, his brow furrowing. "Nico, how could you possibly know that? The wind hasn't even shifted."
"Because it shifts in twelve minutes!" I yelled, losing my grip on my composure. The sheer terror of seeing them die and the bizarre, crushing weight of my past life were colliding in my head. "The wind shifts, the scent of smoke comes from the west, and they step out of the brush. They tell me to come with them to spare you. Eliza whispers to me, fires four arrows, we run, she trips on a root, we help her up, and then we get cornered and..."
I choked on the words, looking directly at Eliza. An arrow to the throat. I couldn't say it out loud.
Silence fell over the forest path. Elijah and Eliza exchanged a long, deeply concerned look. They didn't think I was a prophet; they thought I was losing my mind under the pressure of the escape.
"Nico..." Elijah started softly, taking a step toward me, his hands raised passively. "We've been running for days. You haven't slept. The stress from the cathedral—"
"I am not crazy!" I reached into my collar, yanked the amulet free, and focused my thoughts on its pocket dimension. With a soft, shimmering pulse of light, three sets of folded leather armor materialized on the grass at our feet, along with a heavy waterskin.
Both of them drew back, stunned.
"Your mother's amulet," Eliza whispered, her eyes wide. "It... it never did that before."
"Because it wasn't unlocked until now," I said, my breathing ragged. "Listen to me. I don't have time to explain the cosmos to you, but we have less than ten minutes before they close the trap. Put this armor on, quickly. It might save your life. If we keep walking down this path, we die. All three of us. I know the way out, but we have to leave the trail now."
Elijah looked at the leather armor, then at the eerie intensity in my eyes. The skepticism in his face hardened into something grimmer. He trusted me. He always had. He grabbed a set and quickly began strapping the hardened leather over his chest, Eliza following suit without another word.
"Where do we go?" Elijah asked once his armor was secure.
"We don't go toward the clearing, and we don't go to Aaron's Reach by the main road," I said, turning sharply toward the thick, overgrown brush to the east, facing away from where the smoke would carry. "We cut through the Black-Gorse thicket. It's dense, it'll tear regular clothes to shreds—which is why we need this leather—but their long cloaks will get caught in the thorns if they try to pursue us at speed. If we can bypass their flanking units, we can loop around to the northern docks."
Right on cue, a sudden, sharp gust of wind swept through the high canopy. The leaves rustled violently.
Eliza sniffed the air, her face going pale as she adjusted her new leather bracers. "Smoke," she whispered. "And... old ash."
"They're here," I said, a cold, ancient calm suddenly settling over my modern mind—the fragment of the hero I used to be locking into place. "Keep your heads down. Do exactly what I do. We are rewriting the script."
I plunged into the briars, the sharp thorns scraping harmlessly against my tough leather sleeves. Behind me, I heard the reassuring sound of Elijah and Eliza crashing into the brush right on my heels.
The clock was ticking, but for the first time, we weren't just running. We were fighting back.