The forest was no longer still.
Birdsong had ceased. Branches shivered though there was no wind. Even the insects had gone silent.
Theo leaned heavily on Nova as they descended from the echo chamber. His legs weren't quite steady, and the vision still pulsed at the edge of his thoughts like a half-remembered dream refusing to fade.
Nova looked up at him, her brows furrowed. "You're shaking."
"I'm... anchored," he muttered. "But it pulled more than I expected. The thread didn't just show me the fracture—it tried to remember me."
Nova steadied him. "You think it was conscious?"
"I think it was... resentful."
Behind them, Ayen crouched near the chamber's entrance, one eye on the path, the other on the horizon, jaw clenched. Rell scanned the tree line with one hand on the hilt of his phase-knife.
"They're coming fast," he said. "Whatever's out there—it knows we touched the nexus. No way the Warden Orders didn't feel that kind of resonance."
Nova turned to Theo. "We don't have time for recovery. If the Seer finds us—"
"Then they'll see everything," Theo finished grimly. "Not just what we did here, but who we are. Who I am."
A heavy silence fell. Everyone understood. The Seers weren't scouts. They weren't killers. They were worse.
They extracted truths.
Theo pushed off the tree he was leaning on and stood upright, though the effort made him grit his teeth. "We can't run. Not fast enough. Not in this terrain. And we can't fight—not against a Seer."
"Then what?" Ayen snapped. "You want us to just hide? They'll scour this whole quadrant if they have to."
"No," Nova said quietly. "We let them find us. But not all of us."
A pause. Then her meaning clicked.
"No," Theo said immediately. "Absolutely not."
But Nova's eyes were already steady, resolved. "They won't expect me. They've been tracking you. You step away, I stay behind. I can draw their attention. Stall them."
Theo turned to her, his voice raw. "That thing will dig through you, Nova. It'll see your blood, your fears, your family. The Seer doesn't just look—it unmakes."
Nova smiled faintly. "I've stared down timelines where the sun never rose. Where you never came back. Where I died without anyone remembering my name. I can handle being seen."
It was a terrible kind of courage—the kind people found only when they'd already made peace with loss.
Rell stepped forward. "No one does this alone. If she's stalling, I'll cover her. I've tangled with Warden scouts before. Not a Seer, but I know how to distract."
Ayen rolled her eyes. "Great, two martyrs."
Nova turned to Theo. "You're the one who found the fracture. Who saw the truth. You have to get to the Silver Crown District. If they catch you now, it's over before it even begins."
Theo didn't answer. He looked between them, saw the silent resolve, the steady acceptance. He hated this. Hated how this was what fate manipulation cost—not just lives, but choices. It hollowed people, made them gamble with their own worth.
He stepped forward, rested a hand on Nova's shoulder. "If anything happens—"
"Then you finish this," she said firmly. "Don't come back for me. Don't try to fix it. That's how the last ones broke the world. No one life is worth unraveling fate again."
Theo's jaw tightened, but he nodded.
They moved fast after that.
Theo and Ayen veered west, taking a hidden tributary path away from the echo chamber. Rell and Nova circled north, toward an overgrown ruin they could use as cover. They didn't say much. Words wouldn't make the parting easier.
And then, just as twilight sank low over the trees, the air shifted again.
Theo felt it more than heard it—a presence, like someone walking across the strings of a grand harp with bare hands. His breath caught. So did Ayen's.
Behind them, in the direction they'd come from, the forest shimmered unnaturally. A ripple of displacement—like time itself had blinked.
And then a voice echoed—not loud, but everywhere.
"The threadline shivers. The echo sings. The Anomaly walks again."
Theo spun, instinctively looking back through the trees, though they were already far from the chamber. He could just barely see the glimmer of the ruin they'd left behind.
A figure was stepping from the treeline there. Shrouded in silver and deep grey, face hidden beneath a veil of transparent thread. It moved like a marionette unburdened by strings—graceful, terrible.
The Seer.
Nova stood tall in its path, hands at her sides, eyes defiant.
Theo didn't dare breathe.
He didn't know if she would survive.
But he knew this: the future was now paying attention.
And fate was watching back.