BOUND BY MIDNIGHT BLOOD

Chapter 13: Visions That Bleed

Soren's POV

The visions came before I even closed my eyes that night, tearing through me like claws dragged across the inside of my skull. I had barely sat down on the edge of my bed, my body still aching from the fight hours earlier, when the first one hit hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.

Lyra, on the ground, blood pooling dark beneath her while Kael screamed a sound I hoped never to hear from him again.

Lyra, alone in a room I did not recognize, no one beside her, her chest still, the silence around her louder than anything I had ever felt.

Lyra, standing in nothing but shadow, her eyes gone completely black, the Void swallowing whatever was left of the girl I knew, pulling her under piece by piece until there was nothing recognizable left.

I woke on the floor of my room, my nose already bleeding, my ears ringing with a high, constant hum that would not fade. I did not remember falling. I only remembered the visions, layered on top of each other, fighting for space inside my skull, none of them agreeing on how this ended.

That was the worst part. Not the pain, but the uncertainty.

Every vision cost me a piece of my own mind, a fragment of memory I could no longer place correctly. Had I seen my mother's face last week, or had that been a glimpse of a future that had not happened yet? Had Lyra actually laughed with me in the training hall, or had I only seen a version of her that might exist someday and might not exist at all? The lines kept blurring, thinner every time I pushed myself to see further, until I could barely tell my own past from a stranger's imagined future.

I found her at dawn, exactly where I somehow already knew she would be.

The training grounds sat empty except for her, moving through slow forms in the gray morning light, shadow curling faint around her hands as she practiced control instead of power. Each movement was careful, measured, nothing like the wild bursts I had watched her throw in the arena. She looked tired in a way sleep would not fix, the same tired I recognized in my own reflection lately, the kind that sat behind the eyes and never fully left.

"You should not be out here alone," I said, stepping into view, my footsteps quiet against the packed dirt.

She did not startle. "Neither should you, from the look of you."

I touched my upper lip without thinking, felt the dried blood still there, cracked and dark against my skin. "Another vision."

"Tell me." She lowered her hands, giving me her full attention, the way she rarely gave anyone since the hollowing took whatever trust she used to carry so freely. It felt strange, being trusted with even this much of her focus.

I hesitated for a long moment. Warning her outright had not worked in the past. Every time I named a fixed future, the vision shifted to punish my certainty, twisting into a worse version of the same fear. I had learned, painfully, to speak in edges instead of answers.

"There are paths ahead of you that end badly," I said carefully. "More than one. I cannot tell you which is coming. I can only tell you to be careful who you let close."

"That is not exactly specific, Soren."

"Specific gets people killed." My voice came out sharper than I meant it, an edge I rarely let show around her. "The moment I speak a future out loud, it starts trying to become true. I have seen that happen too many times to risk it again, and I will not be the reason it happens to you."

She studied me for a long, quiet moment, her expression softening in a way I had not expected. "You carry all of this alone. Every vision. Every cost."

"I chose it." The words came out quieter than I meant them to.

"That does not make it easier."

No. It did not. I had not told anyone that before, not even myself, not in words I let myself actually hear until this exact moment, standing across from the one person who might understand what it cost me.

"Soren." She stepped closer, her voice quiet, careful in a way I had not heard from her before. "Why do you keep pushing yourself this hard for me?"

I opened my mouth to answer, and that was when the next vision hit, faster and darker than anything before it, ripping through me without warning, tearing the ground out from under my own thoughts.

I saw myself, standing over her, my own hands wrapped in shadow that was not shadow at all but a deeper dark, colder, older, wrong in a way I could not name. I saw her face, betrayed, staring up at me like I had taken from her something she could never get back. I saw myself speaking words I could not hear, my mouth moving without sound, and I saw her fall, slow and final, like the ground itself had opened up to catch her.

I stumbled back, gasping, the ground tilting hard beneath me.

"Soren?" Her voice sounded far away, muffled by the ringing that had grown louder, sharper, drowning out everything else around us. "Soren, what is happening?"

I could not answer, my throat locked tight around the words. The vision kept looping, over and over, my own face twisted into a shape I barely recognized, one that hurt her on purpose, deliberately, without hesitation. I did not know if it was real, I did not know if it was still coming or if it had already happened somewhere in a future I had not caught up to yet. I did not know anything anymore with certainty, not the way I used to before all of this started stealing pieces of my own mind, one fractured moment at a time.

Blood ran hot from my nose, thicker than before, and then from my ears too, warm trails sliding down my neck and soaking into the collar of my shirt.

My knees gave out beneath me, the training grounds tilting sideways.

Lyra caught me before I hit the ground, her arms wrapping around my shoulders, her voice climbing higher with panic I had never heard from her before, not once in all the time I had known her.

"Soren, stay with me." Her grip tightened on my shoulders. "Tell me what you saw."

I looked up at her through the blood and the ringing and the fractured pieces of every future still colliding inside my skull, all of them fighting for space, none of them agreeing on what came next. I forced the words out before the darkness pulled me under completely, before I lost the chance to say them at all.

"One of us will break you," I whispered, my voice barely mine anymore, thin and cracked. "And I do not know if it's me.”