Riley was standing in an ethereal haze, a weightless blur that made the world feel half-formed. The strangeness pressed against her awareness, leaving her body both grounded and impossibly light, as if she were anchored and drifting all at once.

  She had no memory of rising, no sense of waking. She was simply there, present in the moment, upright and balanced, as if she’d been on her feet for far longer than she could account for. Her body felt whole in a way it shouldn’t, her mind clear when it had no right to be.

  Her hand moved to her stomach. Fingers spread, pressing lightly, then harder. She expected pain, heat, dampness, the ugly stickiness of blood. Instead, there was only skin that was smooth, unbroken and cool beneath her touch.

  Riley exhales. Not in relief. More in recalibration.

  Her body had endured a serious injury with blood loss, fever and infection. She should have been weak and dull. Yet here she was, clear, steady and remarkably calm.

  The impossible perfection of her physical state, paired with the unreal quality of her surroundings, pushed a single possibility to the forefront of her mind: she might be dead.

  The haze began to part, and the village revealed itself slowly, as if it had been waiting for her to notice.

  Riley turned, taking it in piece by piece. Recognition settled into her bones: the low wooden huts, the boulder she had helped move, the precarious gate. Every physical detail of the village stood intact, exactly where she had last seen it, yet the people who should have filled it were simply… absent.

  It wasn’t the lack of conversation that startled her; she expected silence. She listened harder, straining for the small life sounds that never fully leave a place: animals shifting, tools working, wood settling. There was nothing.

  She stepped forward, boots scuffing softly against the ground, scanning for any sign of life. Instead, she saw fires sitting cold in their pits, ash undisturbed, as if the heat had vanished without smoke or warning. A knife lay on a chopping block beside half-prepared food. A basket was tipped on its side, contents spilled but not scattered. Doors hung open on their hinges, unlocked, unforced; no splintered wood, no sign of struggle. Things were not taken. They were set down.

  Everyone left at once.

  Or vanished.

  The thought barely finished forming when a shadow slipped across the ground at her feet. It passed only once, a dark sweep that belonged to no cloud. Above her, something moved the air, a brief rush, the whisper of wings.

  Riley searched the skies, but there was nothing there. What was this?

  This was not memory. Memory blurs, shifts, reshapes itself over time. This was exact.

  This was not a dream. Dreams bend, drift, dissolve when pressed. This stood firm.

  And no, this was not death. Death would have left her drifting, unmoored, a spectator to her own absence. But she felt her breath move, felt the weight of her body settle through her feet. Whatever this was, she was still here.

  A vision then. She was being shown something.

  The village filled suddenly. Not gradually, abruptly, like breath slammed back into a body. People occupied the spaces where emptiness had stood a moment ago. Sound returned in broken pieces: boots striking packed earth, a sharp shout cut short, wood being chopped, fire crackling. Movement now crowded the square.

  Riley remained where she was, but she was no longer fully part of it. Her presence didn’t impede their movement. Her balance didn’t shift when the ground trembled beneath running feet. She was anchored in place without weight, observing from inside her own outline.

  The three soldiers were already standing there in the center of the square, as if the world had arranged itself around them. Massive figures, broad and unmoving, their stillness deliberate rather than passive. The red claw marks on their armour pulsed.

  Their actions were familiar to the villagers. They had experienced this brute authority before. When people were shoved aside for blocking a path, there was no surge of panic, no attempt to fight back. No one screams. The crowd compresses and bends around the soldiers like water around stone.

  This was routine.

  Riley made sense of this pattern just as she saw herself step out of a hut and into the square.

  She had never believed in out-of-body experiences until this moment.

  She saw herself stagger, still injured.

  Vision-Riley attempted to straighten. She lifted, set her shoulders and tried to move with a dignity that her body could barely support.

  Watching-Riley did not interfere.

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  She could not.

  Then came her faceplant. There is no graceful way down for Vision-Riley. She pitches forward and landed hard in the mud with a sound that drew sudden attention to her presence and her weakness.

  One of the Clawborn turns his head. From Watching-Riley’s perspective she could now see the daggers in his cold yellow eyes as he zeroed in on her. He grabbed Vision-Riley’s arm and hauled her partway up, not to help, but to assess. He shook her once, sharp and impatient, as if she were simply another problem in his way.

  Whatever might have set her apart vanished beneath the mud that covered her. She was just another villager now. She had no authority here. No name that matters. Yet instinctively she still tried to resist despite her weakness.

  A second soldier stepped in and struck her down. She hit the ground again, harder this time.

  A murmur rippled through the crowd. It was not outrage. It was fear. People shifted, drew back, pressed together.

  Right on cue, Mali’s father stepped forward. He moved with care, hands raised, open and empty. He placed himself between Vision-Riley and the soldiers, his body a quiet barrier.

  Watching-Riley felt the crowd freeze. She recognized the quiet defiance that had challenged the Clawborn’s leadership and the immediate response it evoked.

  Not again. She knew what came next. She could not bear to watch, and yet the vision would not let her look away.

  The creatures grabbed hold of him without needing to confer with one another; there was no question about how they would handle this.

  The leader of the three became evident to Watching-Riley. It was obvious in the way the others made space for him without command. When he spoke, his voice was harsh and cutting, shaped to carry. And just as it had been in reality, though their language was unfamiliar to her, their meaning was clear: defiance would be broken publicly.

  Watching-Riley saw herself attempting to stand but failing. She understood why, but she still wanted to scream at herself. “Stand up Riley! This is your fault. You can’t let this happen. Do something! Say something!”

  Across the square, Mali became visible. She stood frozen, half-hidden behind her mother’s skirt. The doll dangled forgotten from her fingers, its head lolling as if it, too, has gone slack in futile acceptance for what was about to happen.

  Two soldiers restrained Mali’s father, forcing him upright, holding him steady. The leader drew a dagger, not hurried, not theatrical. The blade catches the light briefly. His movements were calm. Practiced. Unemotional.

  This was not rage.

  This was policy.

  Watching-Riley’s gaze snapped to Mali.

  For one suspended heartbeat, their eyes met. But Mali was not looking at her; she was looking through her. She was looking past the woman in the mud, past the body that tried and failed to intervene, into a future that had already been decided.

  Suddenly, perspective shifted without warning.

  Riley didn’t move, the world did. The ground began to fall away, the village shrank as if gravity had reversed its allegiance. She became small within the frame of it, a dark figure pinned to a scene that no longer needed her. Distance stretched. Details flattened.

  She lifted her gaze upward.

  Blackness filled the sky as wings unfolded. Feathers layered and precise, absorbed what little light remained. A raven was fully revealed now, no longer suggested by shadow or sound. It watched from above, head tilted slightly, eyes sharp and unreadable. Not descending. Not intervening.

  Witnessing.

  Beyond the fading village, Riley’s tower came into view.

  It stood intact, claimed, secured; not occupied in any living sense. No banners flew. No fires burned. It was silent, used only as shelter, stone holding against weather and time rather than purpose.

  Movement drew Watching-Riley’s eye farther out.

  In the distance, the Clawborn advanced.

  They marched in ordered lines, rhythm precise enough to feel mechanical. The vision refused to give them faces. Only legs and boots were now visible; striking the earth in unison, progressing measured and inevitable.

  The view drops suddenly.

  Ground level.

  The doll Riley had made Mali lay in the dirt where it had fallen. Its cloth was darkened, soaked through with blood. But there is no sign of Mali near it.

  The soldiers march past.

  Boots pass within inches of the doll, mud splashing, shadows crossing its small shape again and again. None of them look down. None of them notice.

  The raven watches from above.

  And vision locked in on that image, not of violence, not of power, but of something small and handmade left behind, unseen, as the future moves forward without slowing.

  Riley could sense the meaning. This wasn’t fate. This wasn’t a prophecy. This was simply what happens if nothing changes.

  The raven tilts its head.

  It looks to the tower; stone, height, shelter waiting to be shaped into more.

  It looks to the village; small, exposed, vulnerable to patterns it cannot interrupt.

  It looks to the road; long, inevitable, already carrying boots toward the same ending.

  Riley comes to an understanding.

  She had spent so long thinking the tower was meant to protect her, a personal shield, a way to survive whatever this world threw at her. But standing here now, she understood how small that thinking had been. The tower wasn’t just hers. It was a foothold. A resource. A responsibility. It was not a refuge, it was a conduit.

  She felt now that she wasn’t here to grind levels for her own safety. She was here to level the tower, level herself, and use both to protect others. To change things.

  But other houses had probably been building power for years, maybe generations. Their towers were higher, their influence entrenched, their reach long. She would be outranked, outresourced, and outmatched unless she prepared; unless she strategized with the same ruthless precision she once brought to every raid, every dungeon, every impossible boss fight.

  This world wasn’t fixed. Its outcomes weren’t locked in. Nothing here was predestined.

  She hadn’t been brought to this place as part of some divine script. She believed she was here because the world needed a variable, someone unpredictable, someone capable of rewriting the pattern. She could be a catalyst. A mechanism to engineer a new future.

  And for the first time, she felt the weight of that truth settle not as fear, but as purpose.

  The vision breaks.

  Feathers loosen into ash and shadow, dissolving midair. The edges collapse inward, snapping distance shut.

  Smoke rolls back in, thick and familiar, carrying heat and the faint bite of herbs that had burned too long.

  Riley wakes.

  She is on a cot, the healer’s hands steady at her side. Pain is present but contained, wrapped and managed rather than overwhelming. The world resumes its proper weight; sounds grounded, light uneven, breath returning to her chest with a quiet ache.

  Back in her reality, Riley re-establishes her existence and her purpose.

  She did not think of her home. That past would have to wait to be found again. What mattered now was the future she needed to shape here, in this world. And to do that, she would need time. Preparation. Infrastructure. Scale.