[Chapter 5: First Countermove
341 Words
“If the future’s a river, sometimes you have to throw a stone before the water reaches you.”
That afternoon, I found Corren at the old forge.
He was broad and scarred, with the kind of hands that could bend steel but couldn’t sign his own name. In my last life, I’d met him far too late — after his home had been burned and his loyalty sold to the highest bidder.
This time, I’d get to him first.
“You don’t know me,” I said, standing in the doorway as sparks lit the dim workshop, “but I know you’ll need someone soon. Someone who won’t turn their back when it matters.”
Corren’s hammer paused mid-swing. “And why’s that?”
“Because a storm’s coming. One that doesn’t care about the walls of this city.”
He frowned, suspicious — but when I laid a small pouch of silver on his workbench and whispered a “future” secret only he could know, the doubt in his eyes cracked.
By sunset, he’d agreed to stand with me.
That night, I sold a hidden stash of herbs in the market — just before word spread of the creeping blight. With the sudden shortage, the profit was enough to quietly purchase a plot of land beyond the city walls.
When I arrived to inspect it, the earth felt wrong beneath my boots — as if it remembered something I didn’t.
Half-buried near the edge of a dry streambed, my boot struck metal. I knelt, brushing away dirt until a curved relic emerged: a piece of blackened steel etched with the same spiraling lines I’d found under my desk.
The moment my fingers closed around it, my vision flared white.
A sky split by fire. Cities broken and burning. Shapes moving through the smoke — not human, not entirely alive.
When my vision cleared, I was still crouched in the dirt. But someone was watching from the treeline.
And as the wind shifted, I saw him step forward.
Kaden.
- Writer
