Chapter 85: So... I’m Staying Here?

Senya shook her head slowly, her sharp eyes holding mine. "Forgive me. What I meant to say is that I cannot let you leave yet. Not that I won’t let you leave at all."

"Then what are you actually asking?"

"Your presence... I want you to stay here, in this territory, for a while."

I couldn’t help but frown. "Why?"

She was quiet for a long moment, her gaze drifting toward the small window again, as though watching something only she could see.

"Nearly two years ago, I had a vision. Not a fragment this time, not a ripple. A full, clear dream, the kind I’ve only experienced a handful of times in my entire life." Her voice lowered, the weight of the memory pressing down on her words. "I saw this territory burning. The gates torn open. Bodies scattered through the streets you walked through just an hour ago. Children, elders, mothers, all of them. I saw Diana’s face among the dead. I saw this very hut reduced to ash."

My stomach turned cold.

"I don’t know exactly when it happens. Visions like that rarely come with a clear date attached. But the shape of it, the feeling of it, has never faded from me. Not even once, in two years."

"Then I don’t understand... Where do I fit into any of that? Why do you want me to stay here, specifically?"

"Because your presence might change the fate of this village, Neo Draven... I’m not entirely certain of it myself. But if there’s even the smallest chance that it could, I want that chance to exist."

"If fate can actually be changed, then why don’t you do it yourself? You’re the one who can feel it. You know it far better than I ever could. So why not just change it yourself?"

Her lips pressed into a thin line. "I cannot do that. I am only a watcher. I don’t weave the threads of fate, I can barely even sense them clearly enough to describe what I feel. And you already saw, firsthand, what happens when I try to push against it even slightly."

She gestured faintly at the dried blood still staining the corner of her mouth.

"So, I am just an old woman who can glimpse pieces of the future, with no power at all to actually change it... But you are different... Fate itself behaves strangely around you. It bends, shifts, tangles in ways it never does around anyone else I’ve ever encountered. So I am asking you, begging you, if I must. Please, stay here. At least for a few months."

"I’m not asking you to risk your life for my people, or fight for them," she added quickly, before I could respond. "Simply stay. If my choice turns out to be wrong, if nothing changes at all, then I give you my word, I will help you find your way safely back to the empire myself."

I sat there, unable to answer right away, my mind caught between the pull of everything waiting for me back home and the weight of what she’d just laid out in front of me.

"I can’t stay here. I have a home to get back to. My parents don’t even know if I’m alive right now. My little sister is probably crying herself to sleep every night. And you’re asking me to just... stay, and help a village I’ve known for less than an hour?"

Senya pursed her thin lips, her expression unreadable. "I leave the decision entirely up to you."

I let out a frustrated breath, because I already knew exactly what she was doing. She wasn’t pushing. She wasn’t begging anymore. She was simply standing back and letting the guilt do the work for her, fully confident I wouldn’t be able to just walk away after everything she’d told me.

’Sly old woman.’

"Sigh. Fine... But you’d better make proper arrangements for me while I’m here. I’m not spending the next few months in some run-down shack. I’m a noble, in case you forgot. I’m used to living in an actual mansion, not some hut," I said, dragging a hand down my face.

Senya let out a dry, wheezing chuckle. "I’m afraid our territory doesn’t have the materials or the skilled hands to build you anything close to that. Even if we somehow gathered the materials, there’s no one here trained for that kind of work. You’ll simply have to adjust."

"Ughh... That’s completely unfair."

She rose slowly from her chair, leaning heavily on her cane, and shuffled toward the back of the hut without another word, clearly considering the conversation finished.

Left alone, I stepped outside, blinking against the brighter afternoon light.

Diana stood a short distance from the door, arms crossed, staring off into the distance with a faintly dazed expression, as though she’d been standing there the entire time, lost in her own thoughts.

I flicked a finger toward her. "Aunty Diana, why do you look so out of it?"

She blinked, snapping out of whatever trance she’d been in, her eyes narrowing immediately. "Nothing. And I’m not an aunty. Call me big sister."

"Huh? Big sister?" I looked her up and down, unimpressed. "Nah. You’ve got that whole ’tired aunty’ energy going on. Aunty it is."

Her eye twitched visibly. "I’m twenty-six."

"Exactly. Practically an age of aunty."

She let out a long, exasperated breath, clearly deciding arguing further wasn’t worth the effort. "Whatever. Come on. If you’re staying here, you might as well learn your way around before you wander off and get yourself eaten by something."

She turned and started walking without waiting for my response, and I jogged a few quick steps to catch up, falling into step beside her.

"So, how big is this place, exactly?" I asked, glancing around at the scattered wooden houses as we moved back toward the main part of the settlement.

"Smaller than it used to be... We lost a lot of people in the raid eight years ago, and more just recently, to the fortress. What’s left is maybe three hundred people. Give or take." Diana said, her tone carrying a faint, practiced flatness.

"Three hundred... Well, that’s not a lot."

"It’s enough... This way. I’ll show you where the food stores are kept, and where you can draw water. You’ll need to know that much, at least, if you’re staying for months."

"Wait, so that sly old woman already told you I was going to stay?"

"Don’t call her that."

"Whatever..."

We walked on, passing small clusters of houses, a handful of children chasing each other between the buildings, their laughter carrying easily across the open square despite everything the village had clearly been through. A few adults paused in their work to watch me pass, their expressions wary, though none of them said anything outright.

’Guess word travels fast around here.’

I adjusted my hood carefully, not wanting to reveal my identity as a human.

Diana led me past a modest storehouse, a well positioned near the center of the settlement, and a long, open structure where several villagers were busy mending torn fishing nets and worn hunting gear.

"And this... is where you’ll be staying." she said, stopping in front of a slightly larger building near the edge of the square,

I eyed the structure skeptically. It was marginally bigger than Senya’s hut, though not by much, the wooden walls patched together with the same mismatched boards I’d seen throughout the rest of the village.

"This is it?"

"This is it," Diana confirmed, a faint, satisfied smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, clearly enjoying my obvious disappointment just a little too much. "Welcome to your new home, Young Lord Draven."