THE ONE WHO SEES

The sea whispered with an eerie calm as Vaelric's lone boat drifted through the mist. Grey waves lapped at the hull with a gentleness that unsettled him more than any storm.

He stood at the prow, his cloak stiff from sea-salt and wind, eyes fixed on the dark silhouette ahead. An unmarked isle. One that did not appear on maps, nor in sailor's tales. They called it the Bone Isle, though few had the courage to say why.

Vaelric had not come here for legends. He came for truth—truth clawing at his chest ever since the fire in Westmere, ever since the dreams began again.

It had been ten years since that day. Ten years since his home was reduced to ash. Since blood ran down the village streets, and soldiers claimed his mother had been the only one to survive. They told him the rest had died screaming. Sisters. Uncles. A family he could barely remember anymore—yet whose absence left a pit no time had filled.

He needed answers. Not from men. From someone beyond them.

The Witch in the Bonewood

The boat struck black sand. Cold wind bit at his skin as he stepped onto the shore. There was no birdsong. No life. Only the rustle of dead grass and the distant crack of trees swaying against one another like ancient bones grinding in the dark.

Vaelric moved through a winding forest, its trees gnarled and leafless, their roots knotted like clenched fists. His sword hung at his hip, but it offered no comfort here.

He didn't know how long he walked before he saw the hut. It was shaped like a hollow skull, built from driftwood, antlers, and crumbling stone. Strange symbols burned faintly on the surface, pulsing like embers that refused to die.

A figure stepped from the shadows.

She was stooped and wrapped in the hides of long-dead creatures. Her eyes were white and blind, yet fixed on him with unnatural clarity.

"You've walked far, Ironborn," she said, voice low and brittle like old parchment.

"Come for the past? Or for the blood that waits?"

"I need to understand," Vaelric said. "The dreams. The feeling that something's coming. That something… already has."

"Then sit, son of fire and steel. And drink."

Shadows in the Smoke

Inside the hut, the world narrowed. The ceiling sagged low. The fire burned violet-blue. A ring of stones encircled the floor, humming faintly beneath his boots.

Syrentha—so the seer was named—motioned him to kneel. She placed a bowl before him, steam curling from its surface like ghostly fingers. The scent was ash, herbs, and something older. Something rotten with memory.

"What you see may not be what is," she warned. "But it is always what lies beneath."

Vaelric took the bowl in shaking hands and drank.

The Vision

It hit him like a blade to the chest.

He was no longer in the hut. He stood in the middle of his old village—but it was burning. Screams echoed off timber and stone. Houses caved in. Horses wailed. Children cried out for mothers who were already gone.

Blood ran down the cobblestones like water in spring.

He turned—and saw her. His mother. Young. Beautiful. Alive. Holding a baby, shielding it with her body. Her face was streaked with soot and tears. But she was smiling. At him.

Then it vanished.

The flames swallowed everything again.

Now he stood in a different memory—barefoot in a field at dawn. His sisters danced in circles, their laughter light. He smelled bread from the hearth. His father's voice called from the distance. For a moment, it felt real. Whole. Like the world was untouched.

Then the wind changed.

The field turned red. Blood dripped from the clouds. The laughter warped into screams. His sisters were gone. His hands were soaked in crimson.

And he wasn't alone.

Across the field stood a figure wrapped in shadow. No face—just burning eyes. Watching.

"Who are you?" Vaelric shouted.

The figure stepped forward. The fire of the village burned again behind him.

"Your end," the voice said. It wasn't a whisper. It was truth.

Vaelric gasped and dropped the bowl. As he had awaken from the vision.Smoke hissed across the floor as if angry to be released.

His breathing was ragged. His eyes stung.

Syrentha stood where she had always been, silent and patient.

"You saw?" she asked softly.

"I saw death. Blood. My family."

"But I don't know what it means. Was it real? Was it the past… or something still coming?"

She didn't answer immediately.

Instead, she turned and lifted a bundle from the shadows. It was a piece of cloth—old, but bearing a sigil he recognized: a hawk over flame. His family crest.

"You carry more than steel, Vaelric. You carry legacy. You carry blood older than kingdoms."

"Then what am I?"

"A blade," she said simply. "Forged by pain. Sharpened by vengeance. But even the sharpest blade cannot cut the thread that ties it to fate."

"Speak clearly, damn you!" he snapped. "What do you see?"

Syrentha looked at him with blind eyes, yet seemed to see through everything he was.

"From your blood… shall rise the fire that ends you. Not today. Not tomorrow. But it walks the earth already."

Vaelric's fists clenched.

"Then I'll find it. And kill it."

"Will you kill yourself, then?" she asked, voice almost kind.

He stepped back.

"You don't know me," he growled.

"But I know what burns inside you."

A long silence stretched between them.

As he turned to leave, she whispered behind him:

"It's already begun, son of flame. And not even you can stop it now."