The sun was setting when the three knights finally appeared at the clinic's back entrance.

  Mikel entered first, his hand resting on the hilt of a blade hidden beneath his cloak. Roslyn followed, her eyes scanning every corner of the room before she relaxed while Alfern came last.

  Emil was awake now, sitting up in bed with Jorik beside him. The boy's eyes tracked the knights' movements with an intensity I hadn't seen before.

  "My prince." Roslyn dropped to one knee, and the other two followed suit.

  Emil's fingers tightened around the wooden horse. "Don't do that."

  The three knights exchanged glances.

  "Stand up," Emil said, his voice quiet but firm. "It makes me uncomfortable."

  They rose slowly, uncertainty flickering across their faces. The same with mine.

  Ever since the forest, Emil had been different.

  Gone was the happy child I remembered, the one who'd clapped his hands when he first saw Nox, who'd laughed riding on my wolf's back. That innocent wonder had vanished, replaced by something older. Something that didn't belong in a four-year-old's eyes.

  "How are you feeling? My prince" Alfern asked, taking a step closer.

  “Strange..” Emil's gaze drifted to the window, watching the orange light fade.

  Alfern's expression tightened. He glanced at the other knights before continuing. "It's understandable. Your bloodline gift doesn't normally manifest until your coming of age." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "And with your age, with the trauma you've experienced, your mind is trying to process things it shouldn't have to handle yet."

  "Is that why I keep seeing things that haven't happened?" Emil asked. His voice was too calm, too matter-of-fact. "Or things that already did, but I wasn't there for?"

  Mikel moved closer, his scarred face troubled. "What kind of things?"

  "I see Mother sometimes. Not as I remember her, but younger. Before I was born." He looked up at the knights. "She's arguing with someone. A woman with white hair who keeps telling her not to go through with the marriage."

  "Lady Elara."

  "They come in pieces. Sometimes I'm watching things happen, like I'm standing in the room but no one can see me. Other times, I'm inside someone else, feeling what they feel." He continued as he looked down at the wooden horse. "And sometimes I'm me, but older. Much older. And everything is on fire."

  "The prophecy dreams," Alfern said. "Those show possible futures."

  "But which ones are real?" Emil asked. "How do I know which future I'm supposed to stop and which one I'm supposed to let happen?"

  No one had an answer for that either.

  The silence stretched. I watched the knights shift their weight, glance at each other, searching for words that wouldn't come.

  Alfern finally spoke, his voice heavy. "I'm afraid we have no answer for that, my prince. Only you can say." He rubbed his jaw, looking older in the fading light. "We're merely knights. We only know the rough details about Future Sight, what Princess Alicia chose to share with us.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  "Mother never explained it?" Emil's fingers stilled on the wooden horse.

  "She tried," Roslyn said quietly. "But Future Sight is different for everyone who carries the gift. What worked for her might not work for you." She crossed her arms, her jaw tight. "And we weren't seers ourselves. We could only listen, try to understand from the outside."

  "She said the visions felt like standing at a crossroads," Mikel added. "Each path showing where different choices might lead. But some paths were clearer than others, more solid. Those were the futures most likely to happen."

  "And the unclear ones?" Emil asked.

  "Possibilities that required very specific circumstances. Choices that seemed unlikely." Mikel's scarred face creased. "But she also said the gift was unreliable when it came to herself. That seers often can't see their own futures clearly, only fragments."

  Emil absorbed this, his small face thoughtful. "Did she ever see wrong? Did the visions ever lie?"

  The knights exchanged glances again.

  "Not exactly," Alfern said. "But sometimes she'd see a future and work to prevent it, and then couldn't tell if it never happened because she changed it or because it was never going to happen at all." He shook his head. "She said that was the burden of the gift. Never knowing for certain if you're making a difference or just chasing shadows."

  "That sounds exhausting," I said before I could stop myself.

  "It was." Roslyn's voice was soft. "We watched her carry that weight for years. Second-guessing every decision, wondering if she was seeing the truth or just fear. Wondering if her actions were preventing disaster or causing it."

  And now Emil would carry that same burden. At four years old. The unfairness of it made my chest tight.

  Jorik's hand tightened slightly on Emil's shoulder. "You don't have to figure this all out right now," he said quietly. "You're still just a kid."

  Emil's gaze shifted to him. "But what if I don't have time to be just a kid?"

  The question hung there, unanswerable. I saw something crack in Jorik's expression, quickly hidden.

  Then Emil looked up at the knights, and something shifted in his expression. Resolve settling into place.

  The change was subtle but unmistakable. In that moment, I saw Emil make a choice. Not as a frightened child seeking protection, but as someone who'd already decided his path and was simply informing the rest of us.

  "Then I need to learn." His voice carried a quiet determination. "About everything. Politics, warfare, history. All the things Mother knew, all the context she had when she made her choices."

  "You're four years old," Jorik said.

  "I have no other choice." Emil's hands tightened on the wooden horse. "And if my visions are right, hiding won't save me. It'll just make me useless when the war comes."

  "What war?" I asked.

  Emil's gaze turned to me, and in his eyes I saw something old. Something that had already witnessed the answer to my question in futures that hadn't happened yet.

  "The one Mother died trying to prevent."

  "What do you mean?" I asked, confusion threading through my voice. The others looked equally lost.

  Emil's fingers stilled on the wooden horse. His blue eyes grew distant, unfocused, as if he was seeing something none of us could perceive.

  "In almost every future I see, it ends the same way." His voice was quiet, detached. "The sky tears open."

  The room went cold.

  "Tears open?" Alfern repeated slowly.

  "Like fabric ripping." Emil's gaze remained fixed on something only he could see. "The sky just... breaks. And things come through."

  "Things?" Mikel's hand moved to his sword hilt.

  "Monsters." Emil's voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "Bigger than anything here. They fall from the sky and they don't stop. They just keep coming and coming until there's nothing left."

  Roslyn had gone pale. "My prince, are you certain—"

  "I've seen it hundreds of times." Emil finally looked at her. "Different paths, different choices, but the ending is always the same. The sky tears open. The creatures come. And everyone dies."

  The silence that followed was suffocating. I watched the knights exchange glances, their faces painted with disbelief and dawning horror.

  "When?" Jorik's voice was barely a whisper. His hand had tightened on Emil's shoulder.

  "I don't know exactly." Emil looked down at the wooden horse. "The visions don't have dates…Maybe a decade. Maybe more. But it's soon."

  No wonder he'd been so broken. It wasn't just the trauma of Millbrook. He'd been watching the world end in his dreams, night after night, and he was only four years old.

  The room fell silent again. Outside, the last light had faded completely, leaving us in near darkness. Someone should light a lamp, I thought distantly, but no one moved.

  "So what do we do?" Jorik finally asked. His voice was steady despite everything. "If this is real, if the world is ending, is there no way to stop it??"

  Emil's head lifted, and for the first time since the conversation started, something shifted in his expression. Something that looked almost like hope.

  "There might be."

  "What do you mean?" Roslyn asked.

  Emil turned to look at me as his eyes locked onto mine.

  “You.”