Your ally has brought you to a safe location—a dusty room above a closed shop, far from the main streets. The windows are shuttered. A single candle provides light.

“Tell me again what you saw,” your ally says.

You describe the figure. The armor. The smile. The voice in your mind.

I’ve always seen you. I’ll come for you myself.

Your ally is pale by the time you finish.

“He’s not just aware of you,” they say slowly. “He’s focused on you. After three hundred years, after countless gem-born who tried to stop him… why would he single you out?”

“Because I’m different.”

The words come without thinking. But they feel true.

“The vision during the ceremony,” you continue. “Seraphine spoke to me directly. The gem responded to my touch in a way it didn’t for the others. Maybe… maybe I’m not just another gem-born. Maybe I’m the one she’s been waiting for.”

“The prophecy,” your ally murmurs. “Brother Aldous mentioned it. Something about a child who would remember what Eldermoor forgot.”

You think of Maren’s words. You’re not a child blessed by the crystal. You’re the crystal’s answer to a question that was asked three hundred years ago.

“If Varek sees me as a threat,” you say, “then maybe I actually am one.”

“Or he’s trying to scare you into doing something reckless.”

Your ally moves to the window, peering through a crack in the shutters.

“There. See it?”

You look. Across the street, in the shadow of an alley, something darker than the darkness watches the shop.

“He’s sent another watcher,” your ally says. “Probably to track where you go, who you meet. To learn your patterns before he strikes.”

The shadow shifts. It knows you’re looking.

“We have two options,” your ally continues. “We confront it—let it know we’re not afraid, maybe learn something from the fight. Or we slip out the back, follow it to wherever it reports, find out more about his network.”

Both approaches have merit. Both have risks.

The shadow waits.