Chapter 10: The One Who Feels Tomorrow
There were few who could feel the future.
Not see it. Not predict it. But feel when it changed shape.
Ashael was one of them.
She lived beyond the village ring, where the wards thinned and time behaved less politely. Her dwelling was not hidden, yet rarely found—paths curved away from it unless one approached without intention. She had learned long ago that futures resisted being hunted.
That night, Ashael woke before the disturbance reached the bells.
Her breath caught mid-dream.
Not from fear—but from weight.
The air pressed differently against her skin, dense with consequence. Futures, once branching and restless, had stilled. Not narrowed. Aligned. As if something immense had settled into place and the world was now adjusting around it.
She sat upright, fingers curling against her chest.
"So," she whispered, "it has begun."
Outside, the stars flickered—not dimming, but reordering. Ashael did not look at them. She felt past them, into the unseen arithmetic that governed fate. Something new had entered the equation—not as destruction, but as override.
This was not an ending.
This was a shift of balance.
She rose and traced a sigil in the air, not to summon magic, but to quiet it. Even restrained, the force hummed beneath the world's surface, vast and patient. It was not reaching outward. It was waiting.
For time.
Ashael's sight brushed the village—not its people, not its homes—but its future. Where once she had sensed a thousand fragile threads, she now felt a single dense convergence forming somewhere beyond sight.
Not born yet.
Not chosen yet.
But inevitable.
Her expression hardened.
"This one will not belong to the present," she murmured. "And the present will not forgive that."
She understood then what her role would be—not guardian, not teacher, but shield. Not against enemies, but against premature knowing. If the world discovered what was coming too early, it would try to shape it… or break it.
She would not allow that.
Ashael reached for her staff, older than the village wards, older than the last great convergence. As her fingers closed around it, the future resisted—then yielded.
Good.
Somewhere deep in the forest, the force remained suspended, complete but unclaimed. Somewhere closer, a woman breathed unaware of what would one day pass through her life.
And somewhere between them, Ashael stood watch.
Not over a child.
But over what the world would become once that child arrived.