James_Human

“Do you weep for me, my teacher?” She whispered. I pressed my lips to her shaking hand and was transported back to when I first met her thirty years earlier.
“Yes, majesty. I weep for you.” I replied.  “And I weep for my soul. I failed to protect you, and I deserve damnation for it.”
My queen smiled, her blood-spattered face serene in the red haze of blood and smoke. “No, 
Lukas, you have fulfilled your duty. And you will serve me again in the glorious halls of our gods.”
“With all my heart,” I whispered. 
Tears glittered in her eyes, “Call me by my name?” She asked, her voice quiet, weak. “Like you did when I was a little girl.”
“Anna.”

At the end of the world, a mage held his student in his arms as the light left her eyes. At the end of the world a mage stared down his attacker. At the end of the world, a mage died. 
And woke up thirty years before the end of the world. 
He's been given a second chance. 
And this time he's going to do it right.

Spirit Speaker

I shut my eyes tightly, and willed myself to wherever the dream was taking me.

"Lukas? What are you doing here?"

I cracked open an eye and saw Anna. I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Hello, princess." I bowed. "I have no idea. What are you doing here?"

"This is the tapestry room, Lukas. I'm here most nights." She turned back to the section that she had been studying. "And as usual, none of this makes sense. Can you make anything of this? I've been staring at it for a while now."

She pointed to a panel. Sixteen men and women stood on a castle, a banner flew high overhead. A banner I knew well.

"That's the banner of Saintess Anna," I said, pointing at it. "See the insignia? In elven that means Until the Last."

I studied the standard-bearer, but couldn't make out its face. "I don't know who this is though."

The Traitor