The vision shattered, not like breaking glass, but like waking from a dream so real your heart is still pounding in your chest. One moment we were in the fog-choked streets of Stoney Sept, the next we were standing in the cold, silent stone of the Eye, the holographic map of a peaceful Westeros glowing serenely between us.
My knees buckled and I braced myself against the command console, a wave of vertigo washing over me. Torren staggered back, his hand flying to the hilt of his sword, his eyes wide and unfocused.
"The knights… the fog," he breathed, his voice tight with confusion. "My blade… it felt real. But we never left this room."
"No," I said, straightening up, the last vestiges of the chilling vision fading from my senses. "We never left the island. That wasn't the present, Torren. It was the future. The curse didn't just pull me to a place. It showed me a time."
The full weight of what we had seen settled upon us. We saw a rebellion that had not yet happened, a Targaryen dynasty in its death throes, and a Baratheon lord on the cusp of taking the Iron Throne. We saw Eddard Stark, no longer the quiet boy from our memories, but a hardened lord of Winterfell, a leader in a great war.
We stood in silence for a long time, the two of us alone with the terrifying knowledge of a future written in blood and fire. The quiet years we had spent building our sanctuary suddenly seemed like the last days of a peaceful autumn before a world-ending winter.
"What do we do?" Torren finally asked, his voice low. "We know what's coming. Do we try to stop it?"
I looked at the map, at the sigils of a hundred noble houses, peacefully ruling their lands, completely unaware of the storm gathering decades in their future.
"We can't stop a hurricane, Torren," I said grimly. "And that's what's coming. A hurricane that will scour the land. Houses will fall. Ancient lines will be broken forever. Creatures of magic will be hunted to extinction in the chaos. The world will be bled, and much of its history and wonder will be bled out with it."
A new, terrible resolve hardened within me. Our mission, which had been a vague concept of "doing good," was now razor-sharp.
"The vision wasn't just a warning," I continued, my voice ringing with purpose in the quiet room. "It was our directive. We cannot stop the storm, but we can build an ark. We will be this world's memory. We will save those we can—the ones who would be wiped out, forgotten. The noble, the rare, the irreplaceable. We will offer them a sanctuary here, preserving their lines and their knowledge until the storm has passed."
Our long wait was over. Our true work was about to begin. I turned to the archives of the Odyssey, cross-referencing histories and current events. We needed a starting point. A house that was already on the brink, a dynasty about to be extinguished in the years leading up to the great war we had just witnessed.
The name appeared on the screen, a story of pride and impending doom. House Darklyn of Duskendale. An ancient and noble house of the First Men, now teetering on the edge of a conflict with an increasingly paranoid King Aerys II.
"Here," I said, pointing to the coastal city so near to King's Landing. "This is where we start."
Torren nodded, his eyes alight with a fierce new fire. The ghosts of the future had given him a new cause in the present. We left the Eye and headed for the docking bay of the Odyssey, our steps echoing with purpose. This time, there was no summons, no magical pull. There was only our choice.
The vision had shown us the end of an age. Our work, the salvation of its echoes, would begin at Duskendale.