A Glimpse Of What’s To Come

by Succulent_trashcan

Summary:

The Archivist had followed the breadcrumbs: names scattered in statements, half-spoken references to someone, a ghost in the margins. Hiding. Warning. Now he has found you.

The Eye sees all. And you – cursed, gifted, twisted – can see further than it is safe to look. You can see the one thing the Eye cannot. And that makes you dangerous. Jon wants answers. Elias wants control. And you? You want nothing to do with either of them. But you’ve seen what comes next. You’ve seen the end. And knowing might be worse than dying.

(Basically a clairvoyant!Reader meeting Jon and Elias. Written with a female reader in mind but there are only one or two references to the reader’s gender in total, so feel free to reimagining them.)

Chapter 1: Sight Unspoken

You haven’t slept in two days. Not since the last dream. Not since the Archivist saw you.

It hadn’t been a dream exactly. A vision, maybe. A flash in the mirror: a narrow face with streaks of exhaustion carved under the eyes. Hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. Jonathan Sims. The one you have fled from, over and over again. A harbinger in a waistcoat. You’d never met him, not truly. You’d gone out of your way to avoid it. But he had seen you, seen you. And you had known, with perfect, aching certainty, that he would come for you. And that this time, you wouldn’t be able to avoid it.

The rain had started an hour before he arrived. Thick sheets of it painted London in streaks of grey and silver, the kind of downpour that turned the city to a blur, lights hazy behind wet glass, streets reduced to rivers. You’d hoped the weather would make him turn back. You’d even whispered a plea to whatever might listen. But they don’t listen to you. And when the future bleeds into the present like ink through paper, what you want becomes less relevant.

You hear him then.

The rustling of fabric. The exhale of breath. The soft, inevitable creak of the wooden floor in the hallway outside your door. He’s careful in every movement. But the house itself betrays him, this half-rotted, dust-caked flat in West Norwood that you’ve hidden yourself away in for three months now. You’ve learned to suppress your Sight, or at least smother it, to make yourself as small as possible. No questions, no speaking your name aloud. The less the world knows you, the less he sees. Your isolation has gotten you close to the Lonely a couple of times but you’ve managed to avoid it thanks to your Sight. You have become too careless, thinking that you had found a place forgotten by most. Forgotten by the Eye, you had hoped. Until now.

The knock doesn’t come as a surprise.

“Open the door,” comes the voice through the wood. It isn’t angry. Maybe that would have been easier. Instead it is…tired. Fraying. Authority worn thin with desperation. “Please.”

You don’t answer right away. You drop the spoon you were using into the sink, fingers trembling and knuckles turning white, and lean against the kitchen counter, pretending – futilely – that silence would keep him away. You could still try to run. You’ve packed before. Dozens of times. Always a bag by the door. Shoes by the mat. But your feet betray you. Or perhaps they remember, as you do, the inevitability of this moment.

Another knock. Louder. More insistent. “...I know you’re in there,” he says. His voice is deeper than in the snippets of the tapes you had heard in your visions. Worn. Neither kind nor cruel. Just inevitable, like the slow tide pulling you toward the cliff’s edge.

You don’t speak. Your hand hovers over the handle of the door.

A sigh. Feet shuffling. “I don’t want to force this,” he adds. “But I will.”

You open the door.

The man on the step looks exactly like you saw in your dreams, down to the way his scarf is half-untied and his coat is soaked. He looks exhausted. Half-starved. But upright and alert, like he doesn’t need rest anymore. Dark hair clings to his brow. Rain is trailing down his cheeks, or maybe it is sweat. Or tears. It doesn’t matter. His eyes seem to shine at the edges. Only slightly but enough.

“May I come in?” he asks. He shifts his stance. You can almost feel the weight pressing his spine into a curve. It’s as if he’s carrying a second soul. Maybe he is.

You want to say no. You step aside instead. The door clicks shut behind him with a finality that makes your stomach twist.

The flat smells like damp paper and burnt toast. You lead him to the living room. The heating’s gone out. The walls are stained. A shelf next to the old armchair is lined with books you don’t read. You don’t sit.

Jon lowers himself onto the faded settee. His shoulders are stiff, his spine straight. Hands clasped loosely between his knees. His eyes scan the room and for a moment he seems a predator trying not to look too interested.

“Tea?” you offer, because you are still human and still hope that ritual might delay ruin.

He nods. “Please.”

You disappear into the kitchen.

It isn’t until the whistle of the kettle rises that you let the fear bloom in your chest, private and hot. It’s not him you’re afraid of. Not entirely at least. It’s what he means. What follows him. The path you saw the day you brushed too close to the Archives. The crackling, golden-silver threads in your mind, weaving through days not yet lived.

The tea shakes in your grip as you carry it back.

He thanks you quietly, polite horror in the form of a man wearing a long coat and a tired, solemn expression. You sit across from him, body rigid and as far away as possible without seeming too rude.

On the coffee table a small tape recorder is running. You watch the wheels spinning inside it. Maybe you should ask him to turn it off. You realise, with a grim ache, that it’s probably already too late. You will feed the Eye another piece of truth. Another page in the Archives.

He watches you for a moment. Then, calmly, almost casual. Almost. “I know who you are.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“You’ve come up in statements.”

He takes out a stack of papers, fingers brushing against them as if he could taste their stories through skin alone. You avert your gaze.

“Here and there. Always in the periphery. Never quite part of the story. Warnings. Premonitions. Sometimes even names. A woman who knows things she shouldn’t. Always one step ahead. Always disappearing before things go wrong. Or right. Or both.” He tilts his head slightly. A gesture more avian than human. “And yet, you’ve managed to stay off the Institute’s radar for years, just beyond reach. Like a mirage.”

“Sounds fictional.”

He doesn’t smile. “You’re not. I know you’re not.” There was no threat in his voice. No menace. Only weariness and certainty. “You see the future.” It’s not a question.

You don’t answer.

“You’ve been running from me.”

What does he expect you to say? That every time you close your eyes you saw him tear his mind open under the Eye’s unblinking gaze? That Elias smiled at you in dreams that weren’t yours? That the futures where you tried to help always ended in screaming? “You know why.”

“I have my guesses.” He leans forward slightly. “Why run from me?”

You could lie. But what would be the point?

“You’re too close,” you whisper.

“To what?”

You don’t answer that, either. Instead you stare at the recorder again, trying to find a semblance of footing in the conversation. You don’t.

You shake your head, biting your lip. “I don’t want to do this. Please. Just…leave.”

He looks at you. Face drawn, sleepless, with his dark eyes sunken but sharp, the eyes of someone who has stared too long into other people’s nightmares and made peace with the idea that one day he would be one. The air in the room thickens, the last seconds before a summer storm breaks. You feel it in your chest, in your jaw, a pressure like a hand tightening around your heart.

He speaks, voice low. “Tell me what you know.”

Your mouth opens then closes again. You feel the future coiling behind your tongue as if it is smoke, just waiting to escape. You try to swallow it down, hands clenched so tightly your nails bite your palms. Your heart is hammering so loudly you can feel it in your teeth. You try to resist. Not just for yourself, but for him. “No.”

“I’m not asking.” His gaze sharpens, unwavering. “Tell me what you see.”

His voice cracks through your mind like the sky splitting, clawing at your resolve. Your lungs forget how to breathe.

You clench your fists. Your Sight flickers. The Archives, the tapes, the hundreds of eyes on your back. All of them peering through you like a window. And worst of all: him. Elias. Watching from the top of a tower you couldn’t climb, not unless you wanted to burn. You see the tear in the world that swallows daylight whole. You see Jon's pain, his regret. That’s the worst part.

Your lips part – reflex more than choice – but you shake your head hard, hands clutching at your skull as if you could wring the demand out of your ears. The compulsion is crawling through your veins. Reaching into your teeth, your lungs, your tongue, your very breath. It consumes you. There’s a pulsing pressure behind your eyes, like a chorus of invisible eyes snapping open.

“[Y/N]…I don’t want to hurt you. But I need to know.”

The truth of that hurts more than any power could. You tremble again. You try one last time to resist. To clutch the dam shut. And fail.

The power of the Archivist is different than that of Elias. Less controlled. Less polished. Still, it is strong enough to tear your memories open. The room folds inward, a kaleidoscope of your own fears refracted in the Eye’s endless gaze. The words rush over your aching tongue as a river in spring, pulling branches and pieces of yourself with them. “I see you before you were this. And then the Eye claiming you. You let it in. You think you can control it. And maybe you do. For a while. And then you stop asking if you’re still you. Your voice is not yours anymore. I see you clawing open your own throat. I see you scream as the knowledge burns you from the inside out. I see you standing in the Panopticon with the weight of billions behind your eyes. You become something I can’t bear to look at.”

He flinches. Just barely.

You are forced to go on, voice cracking, body locked in place. “And I see Elias. I see the thing behind his eyes. I see him reach into your chest like it is nothing, pulling strings through all of us, weaving stories we can’t escape. I’m afraid of him. I’m afraid of you.”

Neither of you speaks for a moment. It’s too quiet. A hush that is anticipation, not rest. The kind of silence you find in a church before the congregation begins to weep.

Jon's voice is low when he speaks again. “Elias has you marked.”

That makes your breath stutter, makes your eyes sting. You look outside the window as if the city beyond it offers safety. It doesn’t. Not anymore. “I didn’t ask for that.”

“No one does.”

You hesitate. “I’m not entirely sure what he is. But he is watching. He always was. You walk into his design like it’s your own. Because he made it that way. He just waits. For you to fall. For the door to open.”

You start shaking. “I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to be part of it. So I tried to stay away. I thought if I wasn’t near the Institute, maybe it wouldn’t find me. I thought...I thought I could warn people, that I could tip stones away from the path, just enough to slow it down or to help someone–” You choke on the rest.

“And it didn’t work,” Jon says softly.

“No,” you whisper. “It never works.”

He turns his gaze from you and the pressure in your head dulls, the storm retreating. He lets you go as if he would a held breath and you nearly collapse inwards. Your breath comes in heavy bursts, shoulders trembling from the effort.

You don’t know what he’ll do with what you’ve given him. You had hoped that maybe, just maybe, it would feel like you’ve passed the burden on. Instead your body just feels raw, something vulnerable inside you scraped hollow.

You look back up at him, really look, and for a moment he looks…young. Lost.

“I didn’t ask for this,” he says, almost inaudible. “I didn’t want to become this thing.”

“No. But you are chosen all the same.”

He closes his eyes for a long moment. When he opens them again, the glow is gone and there is something human in his gaze again. His voice is softer now.

“I’m sorry.”

You nod. “So am I.”

A beat of silence.

“Maybe I can help. You don’t have to be alone.”

“Mm.” You exhale, a dry sound, bitter and disbelieving.

“I won’t tell Elias,” he says, voice barely above a breath.

Your throat tightens. “You don’t have to. I’m sure he already knows.”

Jon doesn’t touch you. Just leans back, slowly, offering you space. As if he knew what it meant to feel hunted by your own knowledge.

Silence settles over the room. The storm has softened, but the sky still weeps. You feel cold.

Jon sighs and runs his hand through his hair. His movements are slower now, heavier, as though your words have weighted his bones. “If it comes down to it…will you try to stop me?”

You smile ruefully. Because even now, you still want to change things. You had hoped that maybe if you moved enough pieces, it would break the pattern. But you aren’t a player. You’re merely a witness to all the chaos and pain that is yet to come. “I won’t be able to change anything. But I hope someone does.”

The recorder clicks to a stop.

In the infinite spiderweb of futures still to come, the two of you sit beneath the Eye’s gaze – a prophet and a priest, tangled in stories that cannot be unwritten. And in the distance, the Watcher smiles.

Chapter 2: All That Must Be Known

The rain is lighter now, but the cold still clings to your skin.

You didn’t say goodbye to Jon. You only told him what he could bear to know. Enough to stall what was coming. Enough to let him sleep, if he ever still did. Some truths are too volatile to name aloud.

The next morning, there had been a letter in front of your door. “You’ve been avoiding me. That’s understandable. Let’s not continue the habit. – E.”

You left your flat in the span of half an hour, as the storm crept over the city’s skyline, the colour of a bruise spreading across the world. The Eye was watching now. More than usual. It noticed you again, and you’d lost your only shield by stepping into its Archivist’s line of sight.

You told yourself it was worth it, that maybe talking to Jon might have changed something.

Now, walking the dark corridors of disused tube stations and sleeping in abandoned hostels under fake names, you don’t feel so sure. It stalks you. He stalks you. The cold certainty curls at the base of your spine every time you try to rest.

But there are no corners in the world you can hide from the Eye. Not when your soul is a knot of secrets. Not when Elias Bouchard wears borrowed skin and watches you from every shadowed pane of glass. Your cursed foresight has already told you how this ends.

Still, you try.

You find refuge in an abandoned church in Deptford. Maybe, subconsciously, you had tried to seek help from a God you no longer believe in. Ivy has reclaimed the outer wall like a shroud. Inside, the stained-glass windows are cracked and smeared with city grime, dulling the saints into unrecognizable ghosts. It smells of mildew and rotting hymnals, and the stone is cold against your back as you press yourself into the apse.

You sit beneath the shattered rose window and try not to think. The quiet hums in your ears.

Then it stops, even the sounds. No traffic. No breath of wind through the broken panes.

Your skin prickles.

He’s here.

 

 

The door opens.

The sound is soft, gentle even, but it may as well have been the sound of your own coffin lid sliding shut.

You close your eyes. You don’t need to see him. You already know.

“You’ve been very hard to find.”

His voice echoes down the nave like a judgment spoken. It is honeyed, precise. It coils through the air, heavy like perfume. You feel like you might choke.

You don’t answer, don’t open your eyes. You could run or pretend you’re not there. It wouldn’t change anything.

“[Y/N], isn’t it?” He asks, like he doesn’t already know. The sound of your name tastes like iron on your tongue. You open your eyes then, slowly.

The shadows shift near the entrance. And Elias Bouchard steps from them, a man stepping onto a stage. Neat, precise, tailored. The dim light picks out the silver at his temples and casts shadows across his face, angular and sharp. He’s wearing the same suit he wore in your last vision of him, charcoal grey with a tie knotted like a noose. His clothes are spotless. His smile is…not. The expression on his face is a mimicry of pleasantry, stretched too wide and practiced too often. His pale eyes fix on you with the gentleness of a scalpel. The Eye swims behind his gaze, unblinking, infinite.

He walks down the aisle toward you, hands behind his back. Slow. Measured. Like he has all the time in the world.

You meet his gaze. Grey. Cold. Not empty – never that – but too full. It is as if you are staring down a well and realising it has no bottom. Or maybe it is the bottom.

“Director Bouchard,” you say carefully.

He tilts his head. “Let’s not pretend. You know that’s not really my name.”

You breathe in too sharply.

Elias smiles. “I find it…curious,” he continues, folding his hands. “That someone with your particular gift has managed to avoid the gaze of the Eye for so long. My gaze.”

You say nothing.

He’s closer now. Twenty-five feet, maybe less. You don’t remember hearing his steps. The air is wrong around him, like it refracts light in a way it shouldn’t. Like the Eye lives behind his ribs.

“I suppose I should thank Jon. I imagine he didn’t mean to lead me to you, but he never was terribly good at keeping secrets. I had rather hoped the power within him might draw you out eventually.”

Your voice is tight. “I didn’t meet with him for you.”

“No,” Elias agrees. “But you led him to you. Which means…you can no longer hide.”

You back away without thinking.

“Oh, come now,” Elias says, voice light and amused. “I’m not going to hurt you. That would be…wasteful.”

Your heart skips. “Why?”

“Because,” he says, and now there is heat behind the words, a quiet violence he usually keeps leashed, “I built an entire world on certainty. I have guided countless events with the confidence of one who sees all. And yet, you…”

He moves closer again.

“You see lines that I cannot follow. Endings that resist documentation. The Eye craves totality, but you blur. You are an unreadable page in my book,” he admits, and for the first time, his voice shifts. Almost reverent. In a way that makes your stomach turn.

You clench your jaw. “Maybe some things are meant to stay unclear.”

“Not to me,” he says, with the flat certainty of a god wearing a man’s skin.

Your spine hits stone. No way back.

“Don’t,” you whisper. “Don’t come any closer.”

Elias stops, watching you with quiet, amused interest. You realise, then, that he’s studying you. Not the way a person watches a person, more a biologist watching a specimen behind glass.

“Tell me…how does it feel? Seeing what even the Eye cannot? Are you afraid?”

You should lie. You should make something up. You should run. But instead, you meet his gaze.

“It’s terrifying.”

He smiles wider, pleased.

Not at your fear – no, that would be too crude. Too human. He’s delighted by the truth of it. That you said it plainly. That he didn’t have to pry it from your lungs.

“You can see what I can’t. What the Eye can’t. The future: true, unwitnessed, uncorrupted by bias or confession. Untangled by narrative. Do you know how rare that is?”

You do. That’s why you’ve hidden it all your life.

“You understand,” he murmurs, “how valuable you are.”

You recoil slightly, despite yourself. You press back as if you could melt into the wall.

“To whom?” you ask.

A beat of silence.

“To me,” he says.

There’s a weight to that. A subtle shift in the air, like the entire room inhales, like the walls lean in.

Your breath shudders. Your eyes flick to the door of the sacristy. Your feet take a few stumbling steps towards it before you even realise what your body is doing.

You don’t even get halfway before the world tightens. It isn’t a feeling exactly. More like a change in pressure. The bones in your wrists ache. Your breath catches mid-chest.

“Don’t,” he says. No threat in his tone. Just calm command. “I imagine you’ve already seen what happens when you try.”

You want to say something. Demand to leave. Threaten, scream, run–

But it’s true. You already know where every path leads. You see what happens if you raise your voice. If you lie. If you try to leave without permission. And every path ends with him.

“After all, where would you even go?”, he continues, mocking, brushing dust from the cuff of his tailored sleeve.

Somewhere you aren’t watching, your mind screams. But you don’t respond; you don’t run.

He steps behind you. You feel his presence rather than see him, an intruding chill behind your shoulder. You flinch as he reaches out, not quite touching you, just hovering his hand near your temple, testing the air. The Eye in him writhes, trying to catch a glimpse of what lives in your head. You feel his breath on your skin and it’s colder than it should be.

“What do you see when you look at me?” he asks.

You feel the heat in your chest rise, fear crawling up your spine. Not like with Jon, whose power had weight but not…intimacy. Elias doesn’t compel, he infiltrates.

You close your eyes. And you do look. And what you see is wrong.

Not a man. Not even a shape, really. Just a blinding spiral of hunger in a skin suit, coiled around a dozen stolen faces. A mind that’s built as a trap, a mirror maze of identities with Jonah Magnus at its rotten core.

And then you feel it: the pressure of the Eye behind Elias’s own, stretching through his skin like cracks in porcelain. Watching you, your bones, your blood, your thoughts. The room begins to pulse, not visually, but somewhere in your ears, behind your eyes. Reality is breathing wrong. You feel exposed. Peeled open.

You open your eyes, swallow. “Too much.”

“Ah,” he says. “You’re even more exquisite in your clarity than I imagined.”

You stare at the floor, at the way his shadow seems to stretch too far, at the way the stained glass filters light through distorted saints and cracked angels, casting warped halos that seem to squirm when you look at them directly. They can’t save you now.

He takes another step, slow and deliberate, hands behind his back. Steps closer with that infuriating air of someone who’s never known consequence. Not in centuries.

“I think we both know what that means.” He leans forward just slightly, voice soft, curious. Almost gentle. Almost.

“I’m not yours,” you whisper.

“Oh, but you are, my dear. Or rather, you will be.”

The fear sharpens in your chest. Not just primal, animal. Intellectual. The terror of being understood completely. Of being possessed not in body, but in concept. You can feel his attention as a needle, pinning you in place.

You feel tears sting your eyes. “So, what now? You want to use me? Like your Archivist?”

“Fascinating. He frightens you maybe even more than I do.”

“No,” you whisper. “Not more. Differently.”

He nods as though that pleases him.

The air feels thinner now, like speaking too loudly might rupture it.

He sighs, somehow managing to make the exhale sound condescending. “Jon wants to protect you,” Elias says, almost pitying. “That’s worse, in a way. So much worse. He thinks he can still save the world. But you’ve seen it, haven’t you?”

You nod. Slowly.

“Then you know what I’m choosing to do is inevitable.”

A long silence.

“I don’t want to die,” you whisper.

“You won’t,” Elias says. “Not yet. Not for a while. Not if you come with me.”

You see it the moment he says it: a thousand paths where he binds you like a bird in a cage of glass and gold. Where you are not tortured, but preserved. Observed. Prized. Never cold but also never alone. Where your mind is broken, studied until it’s no longer your own.

You blink the vision away with a shudder.

“I see everything,” he murmurs. “Everything within now. Everything within memory. But the future…that is the one thing beyond even the Eye’s reach. Until you.”

You feel the power wrapped around him, cloaked in civility. The Eye doesn’t breathe, but he does, and every breath is calculated.

“Tell me what comes,” he says.

“No.” You hiss, breath coming ragged, body trembling.

“I insist.”

Your Sight jerks open, a cracked mirror in your mind. You fall over, fingers pressing into stone, and see flashes, broken glimpses of what could be:

Pain. Red. A cage. A tower where screams spiral into the stars. You, screaming but not with your voice. With your soul. Thread pulled loose. Bound by knowledge you can’t contain. You see Jon, kneeling in the Archives, eyes glowing. Martin screaming, bound in web. People suffering. So much suffering. And Elias. Always Elias.

His presence touches your mind like oil across glass. You recoil from it instinctively, even in vision.

The words bubble up in your throat, They taste like blood, feel like it too, unwanted and hot, and still you fight them. For one more breath. One more second. One more beat in which you might still choose. His command sets your body aflame, your mouth, your throat, your mind. You double over, choking. You want to close your lips, to bite your tongue, but the Eye has you now.

His voice brushes your ear, ice-cold: “I don’t need to compel you, you know. Not like Jon does. I serve the Eye, through and through, and you cannot lie to me.”

“I’m not lying,” you gasp, teeth chattering with the sheer force it takes to fight against his pull. “I’m withholding.”

He chuckles. “A clever distinction. You think silence gives you agency. But silence is just another script I wrote. And unfortunately for you…I don’t tolerate omissions.”

You cough, sputtering. Finally, you close your eyes. “You break everything. You tear it open until the sky looks back. You use Jon to turn the world into stories and fear and observation. And the Ceaseless Watcher above it all, drinking it all in.”

You don’t realise you are crying until you taste salt. Your breath comes ragged now. You take a moment, drawing shuddering breaths into your trembling, aching chest. Your fingers curl against the cold stone, wet with your tears.

You lift your head up towards his twisted smile, his glowing eyes, peering up at him while he watches your suffering – a statue of a man who had once remembered how to blink. Bile rises in your throat. You despise him. Despise the world he wishes to create.

“You don’t win,” you whisper. “Not in the end. I’ve seen it.”

He regards you a moment longer, smile slipping just the tiniest bit off-kilter. “We’ll see.”

“Jon is going to stop you.”

A pause. Just for a breath. But that’s all it takes. You watch, see the flicker. The one moment Elias Bouchard – or rather Jonah Magnus, avatar of the Beholding – hesitates, uncertain.

“You’re not a god,” you spit. “You’re just a parasite. Wearing a face.”

His eyes sharpen. Not rage. Curiosity. The way a predator might regard something small it didn’t expect to bite.

“You see farther than most,” Elias admits. “But not far enough.”

“Far enough to know you’re afraid of him.”

He looks down at you for a long time. Then, slowly, the smile returns, but this one is fainter. More cautious.

“Jon’s loyalty still lies with humanity, that’s true. He resists what he is becoming.” He muses, circling you. “I do not. I embrace it. I’ve made myself into a vessel worthy of what comes next. I have waited countless lifetimes for someone that would not break,” he says. “And now…finally…he listens.”

His eyes gleam with something ancient and cold. “You won’t be able to change that.”

“I wasn’t trying to change anything,” you say. A weak lie.

“Of course you were,” Elias replies. “That’s why you hid in the first place.”

“I hid because I didn’t want to tell anyone.”

“No. You never do, do you? And yet, somehow…you always do it anyway.”

You choke down a sob. “I won’t help you,” you say, voice raw.

Elias doesn’t falter. “You already have.”

And you realise what he means.

By speaking to Jon. By letting your location slip. You’ve moved the pieces on the board. The future is already different.

“And you, my dear...now that I know where you are – what you are – well…” He smooths a wrinkle in his sleeve. “You belong to the Eye now. Whether you want to or not.”

“No,” you breathe, shuddering. “You can’t keep me.”

The room tilts. Just slightly. Like the floor is breathing under your broken body.

“Oh, but I can.” His voice lowers, silken and cruel. “Because here’s the truth you already know, isn’t it? You’re not safe from me. You never were. And Jon? He can’t protect you. You’ve seen that too.”

Your mind flickers through a dozen possible ends. None of them good. Most of them him. The golden threads of prophecy tightening around your throat.

You stagger to your feet and try to run, out of sheer desperation, just to test fate. You make it three steps before your throat closes up. Your legs go numb. Your eyes burn.

“You will come with me,” Elias Bouchard – Magnus – smiles. His voice sharpens, a needle finding skin. “I’ll take good care of you. And we will see what we can build from this inconvenient little gift of yours. Together.”

Your scream is silent.

And no one is left to hear it.

Notes:

This is the first story I’ve uploaded. I have about 30 WIPs that I’ve been meaning to write but I came up with this one and it wouldn’t leave me alone until I had typed it out. I suppose it helped that it was just two chapters and I had a clear idea for the ending haha. Anyway, hope you enjoyed!