The Hollow celebrated Aelric's Bloodmark victory well into the night, but his mind remained unsettled.
That evening, a strange visitor arrived at his tent—Elder Ysira, the blind oracle of the Hollow, wrapped in robes stitched from moon moth silk and living ivy.
> "The threads around you fray, Prince of Fallen Blades," she said, voice like wind through glass.
Aelric straightened. "You know who I am."
> "I see beyond names, child. I see the fate you've already slain… and the ones yet to come."
She guided him into the Hollow's inner grove, a glade hidden beneath a canopy of silverleaf trees. A glowing pool reflected not water, but shifting moments of possible futures.
> "Your soul has been stitched into two worlds. One—this life. The other—your past. They spiral. Conflict is coming."
Aelric watched the pool as visions unfolded:
A shadowed figure sitting on the elven throne, wreathed in black flame.
Elven armies burning their own forests in madness.
Aelric, standing atop a mountain of corpses, his blade coated in time-warped light.
> "A calamity sealed in golden gears," Ysira whispered. "The Lost God of Time stirs… and your blade, the Fang of the Shattered Flow, is a key to his release."
> "Why me?" Aelric asked.
> "Because you are already broken. The sword chose a fractured soul."
She placed a glowing crystal in his palm—a prophecy shard.
> "When the world begins to rewind, and reality splits, cast this into the Hourglass Gate."
Before he could ask more, Ysira faded into mist.
Aelric looked down at the crystal.
Something deep inside whispered, You were never meant to rest.