October 12, 1916
A Field Hospital near Arras, France
The world was mud and screaming. Rain fell in endless, gray sheets, turning the trenches into graves and the hospital tent into a damp, stinking purgatory. Isabelle Moreau pressed a cloth to the forehead of a young corporal, his leg a mangled ruin of flesh and bone below the knee. He was one of them. She could feel the faint hum beneath his skin, the quiet static of the lightning that had marked him not in 1896, but in a smaller, forgotten storm years later.
"It's alright," she murmured, the lie tasting like ash in her mouth.
The moment her fingers brushed the scar above his eye, the world tore open.
The tent, the rain, the cries of the dying—it all dissolved into a formless gray void. She wasn't falling, but floating, suspended in a place outside of time. Before her, a figure took shape from the mists, a woman with wild red hair and eyes that held the wisdom of ancient stones.
"Meredydd," Isabelle breathed.
"You See me," Meredydd's voice was not a sound, but a thought that bloomed directly in Isabelle's mind. "I sought to build a shield. A sanctuary for our kind, to watch over us when the world turned its gaze away."
A symbol materialized between them, glowing with a soft, golden light: a perfect circle with a sweeping line beneath and two stark, flanking lines. The Eye.
"It was meant to be a protector," Meredydd continued, a deep sorrow coloring her thoughts. "But my sight fails me. Beyond my time, there is a shadow I cannot pierce, a wall my visions cannot climb. Something is blocking me from the future. I fear what my creation becomes without my guidance."
Before Isabelle could respond, the vision fractured. A new consciousness slammed into the space—sharp, terrified, and broadcasting from a future she couldn't comprehend.
A flash. A sterile white room. A girl with dark hair strapped to a chair, her mind a silent scream. Kayoko.
Another flash, a memory not her own. A woman with weary eyes—Geneva—knelt on cracked asphalt, cradling a dying golden retriever. Behind her stood another woman, her face hard with conviction. Lara. "It's the only way," Lara said, her voice cold. "He had to draw their fire. A necessary sacrifice." As the dog, Gerald, took his last breath, Geneva's body convulsed. Her skin wrinkled, her hair grayed, and she aged decades in an instant.
Kayoko's panicked thought echoed through the void: They are our ground. Our anchors. Without them, the power has a heavy toll. We become untethered.
The vision shifted again. A small black cat, Dana, sat curled at the foot of a hospital bed. A girl, Eloisa, lay perfectly still, a heart monitor screaming a flat, unbroken tone. As her life faded, the cat's fur stood on end, and a wave of invisible force erupted from the girl's body, shattering the room.
Kayoko's thought followed, softer now, a thread of understanding. Her condition weakens her, but the weakness is the key. She must be near death to touch her power. For now. She must be weak first to become strong.
Meredydd's image flickered, her form disturbed by the violent future she could not See. "What is this? What have they become?"
Isabelle understood then. The Eye hunting her was not Meredydd's shield, but a twisted perversion of it. They no longer sought to protect; they sought to control. Their new purpose was to find the source of the lightning and stop the events for good.
In the swirling chaos of the vision, she saw her own fate: agents in black coats burning her journal, striking her name from records, burying her existence under decades of war and silence. The Eye would erase her from history.
A final image seared itself into her mind. A boy, Marco, wreathed in uncontrollable flame, his skin blistering. A pigeon, Mavian, swooped down and landed on his shoulder, and the fire instantly receded to a gentle glow. A second boy, Tala, stood on trembling ground, the earth cracking around him until a small monkey, Bayu, leaped into his arms, and the tremors ceased.
The familiars ground them, Isabelle realized with chilling certainty.
Lurking at the edge of the convergence, a silent observer stood half-hidden in shadow. A man with one gleaming amber eye and one milky and blind, his presence ancient and patient. He was not a Seer, but something else. A guide. The Connector. He offered no words, only his silent confirmation that he would remain hidden until his time came.
The vision snapped.
Isabelle gasped, stumbling back, clutching a blood-slicked operating table in the field hospital. The corporal's eyes were glassy and vacant. He was gone.
She stared at her trembling hands, the echoes of the future still ringing in her ears. She now knew the truth of The Eye, the purpose of the familiars, and the terrible price Geneva paid for a sacrifice Lara deemed necessary. She understood the strange paradox of Eloisa's power.
And she knew she was a ghost, a woman already erased.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She had to run. She had to find the standing stone Meredydd had left for her. It was the only way to pass the truth on. Fleeing the tent, she disappeared into the smoke and rain, a woman running from a future that had already condemned her.