Night clung to the shattered arches of the old Vega Temple like it was afraid to loosen its grip. Cold wind swept through the skeletal stone corridors, carrying dust, moonlight, and the heavy scent of coming danger.
Sera ran.
Her boots scraped against cracked mosaic tiles depicting constellations long forgotten—stars that once guided Oracles, before the empire learned to fear them. Before they began the purges.
Her chest burned. Not from the sprint. From the visions.
They came in frantic flickers, each one a sharp blade behind her eyes.
A flash of blaster fire.
A metal hand closing around her throat.
A future where she's dragged away screaming—cut out of time.
Sera stumbled, gripping a broken pillar as her knees buckled. The visions refused to stop. They layered over each other—three seconds, ten seconds, one hour ahead—it didn't matter. They hit her in tangled threads, overlapping, contradictory, all of them ending in her capture.
Her breath shook. "Not… now. Not again."
The empire's hounds were close. She felt them pressing against the edges of her psychic field—sharp, cold signatures like serrated metal slicing through fog.
Hunters.
Three… no, four.
No—five.
Her temples throbbed. The visions multiplied, each wrong and right at the same time. Futures branching off like shattered mirrors. It meant one thing:
Someone powerful was drawing near.
Someone whose presence in the timeline was heavy enough to distort visibility.
Sera pushed herself forward, gripping the satchel at her hip. Inside lay the last surviving fragment of the Oracle Codex—a crystalline shard humming with faint cosmic whispers. If the empire seized it, they could fabricate false futures, weaponizing fate itself.
She couldn't let that happen. Even if her lungs felt like they might tear apart.
"Come on," she whispered. "Move."
The tunnel ahead opened into the central chamber of the ruined temple. Once, it had been a sanctuary of starlight. Now the dome overhead was cracked wide open, revealing a bleeding red moon and drifting ash. A single beam of moonlight cut through the center, illuminating floating motes of dust like a ghostly snowfall.
And standing in the middle—blocking her path—was a man in black armor.
Sera's heart lurched.
His presence pressed on time itself. Like gravity. Heavy. Inevitable.
He was the one distorting her visions.
Tall, broad-shouldered, composed with lethal precision, he stood as if he had already calculated every possible outcome and found only one: her capture.
A smooth, black neural band wrapped around his head, disappearing beneath close-cropped dark hair. The dampener. She recognized it instantly.
A soldier engineered to feel nothing.
His voice echoed, low and metallic through his helmet speakers.
"Oracle Sera of Vega. You are ordered to surrender."
Her pulse slammed against her ribs.
Jaxon.
She didn't know his name yet—not in this moment—but she would learn it soon enough. Too soon. His timeline threaded through hers like a dark comet. She felt it the moment he looked at her.
A jolt of energy shot through the air. A ripple. A… pull.
Sera inhaled sharply.
Not right. That wasn't how neural dampeners behaved.
"Stay back," she warned, lifting a trembling hand. "I don't want to hurt you."
"You can't," he answered calmly. "Your visions are impaired. Your body is exhausted. And I am not programmed to feel fear."
His footsteps were silent on the stone as he advanced.
She tried to reach into the timestream—to peer even a few seconds ahead—but all she got were violent flashes: Jaxon's gauntleted hand catching her wrist, his body pinning her against the broken altar, a sedation collar closing around her throat—
"Stop." She clutched her head as pain seared through her. "You're suppressing too many futures. I can't—"
"That is the point," he said.
He lunged.
She reacted on instinct, energy flaring bright blue at her fingertips. A pulse of psychic force ripped outward, blasting chunks of stone into dust. The chamber shook. Jaxon staggered, boots scraping, armor denting where the shockwave hit.
He should have fallen.
He didn't.
Instead, he straightened slowly. The dented armor plate hissed, repairing itself with nanite shimmer. And then—
He touched his temple. His jaw tightened.
The air around him warped—just subtly, just enough for Sera to feel a shift in the timeline.
He was trying to compensate for something.
"What's wrong with your implant?" she breathed.
Jaxon hesitated.
Just one heartbeat.
Then: "Nothing."
But she saw the flicker in his eyes. A spark, faint and raw.
Emotion.
Her pulse jumped. "You're lying."
"I do not lie."
"You are lying. Your dampener is malfunctioning."
He advanced. She retreated, breath quickening.
"I am functioning at ninety-seven percent capacity," he said. "That is sufficient."
"Ninety-seven percent means you're feeling something."
He froze.
Sera didn't know why she said it—fear, instinct, or the strange magnetism between them—but the words landed like a blow. Jaxon's hand hovered near the blaster at his hip… but he didn't draw it.
He stared at her with a strange, unreadable expression. Not robotic. Not dead.
Conflicted.
Sera swallowed. "You don't want to capture me."
Another blink. Too slow. Too human.
"I want to complete my mission."
"No," she whispered. "You want to understand why you're reacting to me."
His chest rose sharply.
Not much, but enough for her to see it. To feel it.
Her visions flickered again—bright and violent.
His hand brushing her face. Her lips parted beneath his. His body pressed against hers, heat and want burning through the cold armor.
Her breath hitched.
The vision vanished as fast as it came.
She reeled, stunned.
Jaxon tensed as if he felt it too.
He shouldn't have. Dampeners blocked empathic bleed. But the air between them vibrated—hot, electric.
"Your psychic output is destabilizing the structure," he said abruptly, voice rougher. "You risk the entire temple collapsing."
"Maybe that's better than being taken."
"I will not let you die."
He sounded angry.
Emotion again.
Sera lifted her chin. "Then stop chasing me."
"I can't."
He was close enough now that she could see the steady rise and fall of his breath. Close enough that her psychic field tangled with the edges of his neural patterns, sparking like static.
She stepped back—too fast.
Her heel caught the edge of a fallen stone. She stumbled.
Jaxon reached for her—
And that split-second contact—
Skin to skin.
Palm to palm.
—blew the future wide open.
Not flashes this time.
A full vision.
A full, overwhelming, reality-stealing future—
She saw him holding her, bodies intertwined in heat and shadow. She saw his lips on her throat, her gasp, the fire in his eyes where nothing should have burned at all. She saw him dying in her arms. She saw herself dying for him.
Saw their bond.
Saw their fate.
Saw everything.
Sera ripped her hand back with a gasp.
Jaxon staggered as if something slammed into him. His breath hitched—actually hitched.
"What… was that?" he demanded, voice unsteady.
"A future," she whispered.
"Yours?"
"Ours."
Colors flickered in his eyes—blue, then gold, then dark again. His implant sparked. A crackle of electricity jumped across the dampener band.
He winced.
And for the first time, she saw it:
Pain.
Real pain.
"Your implant is failing," she whispered, horrified.
He gritted his teeth. "It will stabilize."
"It won't. Not if you keep coming near me. I'm interfering with it. My presence—my field—it's disrupting your emotional suppression."
He stopped moving.
The chamber echoed with their breaths, the distant howl of wind through shattered stone, and the low hum of the Codex shard in Sera's bag.
At last, Jaxon spoke.
"What are you doing to me?" His voice was soft, dangerous.
Sera swallowed.
"Nothing," she said. "This is fate."
His jaw worked. A muscle twitched beneath one eye.
He lunged again—but not to grab her.
To push her aside.
A blaster bolt screamed through the air where her head had been.
Another hunter—armored in silver—emerged from the shadows, weapon raised.
"No!" Jaxon's voice cut through the chamber like steel.
Before Sera could react, Jaxon stood between her and the attack.
Protecting her.
Against his own squad.
Her breath caught.
Everything was changing.
And it was only the beginning.