"The captain falls here."
The words hadn't left Elias since the moment they appeared. He'd saved Brynn once. But the Script didn't do maybes. If it said she fell, then she fell—today, tomorrow, or ten loops from now.
The question was how.
On the training grounds the next morning, Brynn strode as if she had no ghost looming over her. She drilled the troops with curt commands, corrected footwork, and sparred with Aric in between drills. Elias watched her for some sign of danger—an accident, an errant blade, a sudden sickness. But the day passed uneventfully.
She caught him watching more than once.
"You've been looking at me like I'm about to explode," she said finally, wiping sweat from her forehead. "What's the matter?"
"Just… being careful."
"Is this another of your Reader things?"
Elias tensed. "Who said anything to you?"
Brynn smiled. "No one. You just did."
Later, in the quiet of the mess hall, Selin appeared out of nowhere—sliding into the bench across from him as if she'd been sitting there all along.
"You're doing it wrong," she said.
Elias didn't look up from his food. "Doing what?"
"Hunting a prophecy. You think if you gaze at her long enough, you'll catch the knife on its way. You won't."
He laid down his spoon. "Then what do I do?"
"You find out why the Script wants her dead," Selin said, leaning forward. "The words are the end of a chain. You have to work it back to the first link."
"And how do I do that?"
She shrugged. "Trial and error. Ask questions you don't want to know the answer to. Pull threads you shouldn't. Make enemies."
They walked together toward the courtyard. Elias spoke in a low voice. "You've had deaths repeat?"
"I've had worse than that," Selin said. "The loops don't care about the people you're close to. They'll let you save someone a hundred times, then kill them in a way you can't stop. Just to see if you break."
Elias's fists clenched. "Why?"
She gave him a sharp look. "You think there's a why? You think the gods who penned this thing are moral?"
She interrupted his reply before he had a chance to make it, her gaze locked behind his back. "Well. There's one of them now."
Elias turned to see a man leaning against the archway to the yard—a man in a dark blue cloak, silver thread glinting at the hem. Dark hair, clean face, but his eyes… his eyes glowed softly, as if they burned with a fire no one else could witness.
"Another Reader?" Elias tried.
Selin's voice was dry. "And not the friendly kind."
The man strolled on relaxed strides. "Selin," he drawled, voice as smooth as well-oiled leather. "Taking in strays again?"
Selin's smile was thin. "This one doesn't belong to you, Corren."
Elias's skin crept. "I don't belong to anyone."
"That," Corren said, "remains to be seen."
They talked in circles for a few minutes—Selin trying to brush him off, Corren throwing out little verbal lures, each one calculated to tempt. Elias didn't bite, but he caught the important detail: Readers knew about each other. And some saw the loops as a game with… pawns.
As he left, Corren gave him a parting smile. "When you're tired of running in circles, seek me out. I'll show you how to make the loops work for you."
Elias made no reply. But Selin's frown lingered after Corren had vanished into the street.
"Stay away from him," she said. "He doesn't just bend the Script—he breaks it. And when it breaks, people disappear."
That night, Elias set out to test Selin's advice. Instead of tailing Brynn directly, he monitored the movements of the patrol routes. When next she was scheduled to lead a route near the old aqueduct, he volunteered to accompany her.
The aqueduct was a half-ruined structure, its shattered stone arches stretching toward the river. Moss grew thick along the lower edges, and the air was damp-smelling.
Midway down, Elias noticed a group of men loitering under one of the arches—mercenaries by their assorted armor. They were eyeing Brynn as she passed.
He edged nearer. "Friends of yours?"
She didn't look his way. "Not the paying kind."
They made it to the barracks without incident. But the Script appeared just as Elias was drifting off to sleep.
"The captain falls here."
Exactly the same words. Which meant he hadn't yet found the first link.
The next day, he went a step further. He bribed a stablehand to let him know when Brynn left the city unaccompanied. He trailed her through the outer markets, to a meeting with a merchant in a wine cellar. He didn't hear all of it, but he caught pieces—"keeping the Guild off their backs," and "staying out of Warden interference."
She saw him waiting when she emerged.
"You've been following me," she said.
"I'm trying to keep you alive."
She moved a step closer, her eyes hard. "Then stop."
That night, Selin was back, sitting on the edge of his desk. "How's the hunt?"
"She's hiding something," Elias said.
"She's hiding a lot," Selin corrected. "And you're running out of loops before it catches up to her."
He paused. "Loops? You mean—"
She tilted her head. "You think you're the only one with a clock ticking down? The Script doesn't just warn you of your deaths."
Before he could ask more, she had disappeared again.
The next morning, the Warden tasked Brynn with escorting a Guild convoy through the south quarter. Elias was with her. The streets were close and crowded, shadows pooling between the buildings.
They didn't make it halfway before the first arrow was loosed. From a rooftop. Brynn ducked, drawing her sword, but mercenaries spilled from the alleys, swords glinting. The convoy guards rushed to engage them, steel clashing in the narrow street.
Elias kept close to Brynn's side, dropping one attacker who tried to come around her flank. She battled like she had done this a hundred times—until he saw the glint of a dagger from the side.
The Script flashed.
"The captain falls here."
He slammed into her again, just like at the docks, knocking her out of the dagger's path. The blade scraped his arm instead. Pain flared, hot and sharp, but she was alive.
The mercenaries fled after losing too many. The convoy moved on. Brynn turned to him afterward, brow furrowed.
"You keep throwing yourself in front of me," she said.
"And I'll keep doing it."
But in the recesses of his mind, Elias knew that it did not matter. The prophecy had not been severed, merely paused.