I saw it long before they arrived. The signs were always there — scrawled into the marrow of stars, whispered through the roots of cursed trees, etched in the silence between thunder.
They called me Oracle, but I am no seer. I am a recorder. A vessel. A bearer of what once was and what must come.
The air that day smelled of ash and blood. The council had gathered in full regalia, cloaked in robes meant to impress the heavens, though the gods no longer looked their way. They sat in their stone circles, the cold reaching up through their bones, waiting for me to speak. Not with curiosity. With dread.
I opened my mouth and let it speak through me.
"When the flames of the Forgotten sleep beneath mortal skin,
And shadows kiss the flesh of a marked one,
The tether will awaken.
The cursed prince shall rise again,
Not in conquest, but in ruin.
He will bind himself to the fire born,
Whose voice was once silenced,
Whose heart was once broken.
Through her, kingdoms will tremble. Blood will crown her. Darkness will adore her.
And in her wake, the world will kneel —
Not in reverence, but in reckoning."
The silence after was worse than the storm that followed.
One of them laughed. Another spat at my feet. The High Guard stepped forward to strike me down, but the archmage stopped him. "Not yet," he'd said. "Truth doesn't care if we like it."
And they left.
None of them asked when it would happen. They assumed they'd be long dead before the fire returned. Mortals love to pretend time is their shield. But time does not forget.
I have felt the pulse again.
The mark has awakened.
The cursed prince has taken her.
And she remembers pain like it is her native tongue.
I do not know if she is mercy or vengeance. Perhaps both. Perhaps neither.
But I know that what comes next cannot be stopped, only witnessed.