Chapter 4 Her Real Name

Mags talked for hours.

Her voice, rough from hardship, told her story easily. It seemed almost madness except for the ghost in my chest and the child at my side.

"Three hundred years ago," Mags began, "there was a woman called the First Seer. She could see things no one else could: the future, the past, the spaces between. People feared her. They worshiped her. They tried to kill her. She survived them all."

"The ancient woman?" I asked, trying to clarify.

"The same," Mags replied, drinking. "She wasn’t ancient then, just young, hopeful, determined. She found others with the sight and silver eyes, and built a family, a bloodline."

Mags's good eye grew distant. "She watched everyone she loved age and die, while she stayed the same. Her hope shifted."

"Into what?"

"Hunger." Mags set down the bottle. "She learned to live longer by taking years, power, and souls from other seers. First enemies, then strangers, then her own bloodline."

A chill ran through the ghost in my chest.

"She already is," I said. "Pip sees her in visions. I dream about her." Mags nodded slowly. "She knows you're here. Both of you. Two silver-eyed souls in one body is something new, something she can't understand." She gave a grim smile. 

"That makes you dangerous, and dangerous things don't last long around her." 

"Then how do I fight her?" I asked. 

"You don't," Mags said, her voice flat. 

"Not yet, and not alone. She's had three hundred years to gather power, knowledge, and allies. You've had three days in a dead girl's body." She leaned in. 

"First, you survive. Then you learn. Then you build. Only then, with an army, a family, a weapon she can't predict." Mags gestured around the tavern. 

"I've spent forty years gathering people like you: the forgotten, the broken, those with nowhere else to go. Informants, fighters, survivors. They're not much now, but with the right leader, they could become something." I met her gaze and asked, "You want me to lead your people?"

"I want you to build something new, something she's never faced before," Mags said, her voice both warm and fierce as she smiled. "Call it revenge, survival, or whatever you want. But act quickly. She isn't patient, she isn't kind, and she's already..." Her last word hung in the air as tension filled the room. Suddenly, the door burst open. A boy, maybe fifteen, stumbled in, bloodied and wild-eyed. He tried to speak, pointed to the door, and then collapsed just inside. Right sky.

Mags stood up at once, her worn knife ready, moving with surprising speed. The boy couldn't answer; he was choking on blood. Pip walked over, knelt down, and placed her small hand on his face. Her eyes went distant, deeper than usual, and when she spoke, her voice wasn't fully her own. "Turned it and everyone inside," Pip intoned. She paused, listening. "Twelve dead. Three escaped. The rest..." She looked at Mags. "The rest are coming here."

"How long?" I asked.

"Minutes. Maybe less," Mags replied. She turned to me. "You wanted to build something? Congratulations. You've just inherited a war."

"You don't have to stay," Mags said, not looking my way. "You and the child could run. Hide. Wait this out."

"Run where? She's everywhere. Always watching," I said. I picked up a knife from the bar, its weight familiar in my hand. 

"I'm tired of running." Mags looked at me, a hint of approval in her good eye. 

"Good answer." 

A dozen Syndicate operatives burst through the tavern's doors and windows. They were professionals, well-trained and well-armed. They expected easy prey, but not me. I moved through them, even though my borrowed body protested. Years of muscle memory made up for my weakness. I killed one, then another, then a third. Beside me, Mags fought with brutal skill. Her age didn't matter, her experience did. She had fought this war long before me, and it showed. 

She stood in the corner, ancient eyes watching everything. The fight was chaotic but lasted only five minutes. Eight Syndicate operatives lie dead. The rest fled. The tavern was wrecked, with tables overturned, windows shattered, and blood everywhere. But we were alive.

Mags stood in the center of the carnage, breathing hard, her knife dripping. She looked at me with something like wonder.

"Who the hell are you?" Mags asked, her voice rough with disbelief.

I opened my mouth to answer, but before any words could form, the world went white. In an instant, the tavern, Mags, Pip, they dissolved, swept away by a sudden surge of light, and I tumbled into emptiness.

I opened my mouth to answer, then the world turned white. Suddenly, I stood in a gray void, the same one from my dreams of the ancient woman. This time, she wasn’t alone. I saw ancient eyes, full of grief and regret, watching me.

"You can't save us all," future Pip said. "That's the lesson. That's always the lesson."

"Where are we? What is this?"

"A possibility. One of many," future Pip answered. She gestured, and the void rippled, showing images: the Rusted Nail burning, Mags dead, Rafe broken, Brick hanging from a noose, and me alone, surrounded by bodies, screaming. 

"This is what happens. You will. Partly. In some ways." Future Pip stepped closer. 

"But you'll also succeed. Partly. In other ways. The future isn't one path. It's thousands. The voices show me all of them." She smiled then, Pip's smile, but older and sadder. 

"I'm here to warn you. The ancient woman now knows about you. The attack tonight confirmed it. She'll send more. Stronger. Faster. She won't stop until she has me, or until you kill her."

Future Pip was silent for a long moment. Then she said, "You cannot. Not alone. But together, you, me, the wolf, the soldier, the thief, the mother, you might succeed." She paused. "You will lose some of them, that is inevitable. But you will save others. That is what matters."

"You will," future Pip said as she began to fade. "When the time comes, you will understand. Some deaths cannot be prevented. Some sacrifices must be made." Her voice echoed in the void. "But the choice of who dies is yours. Choose wisely."

I woke on the tavern floor, the blinding white fading, shape and color returning as faces came into focus: Mags, Pip, and strangers I did not know. The harshness of the vision clung to me as reality sharpened around their familiar worry.

"You saw her," she whispered. "The other me. The future me."

"Yes."

I looked at the silver-eyed child who carried futures she couldn’t control. I remembered future Pip’s visions: deaths, losses, pain. "She said we will win," I lied. "We’ll defeat the ancient woman and build something beautiful. You’ll grow up strong, happy, and surrounded." Pip studied me. Maybe she chose to believe. Maybe she needed to, as much as I needed to say it.

"Okay," she said finally. "I believe you."

Mags helped me sit up. Her expression was unreadable, but when she spoke, her voice was gentle.

"You have the sight too," she said. "Did you know? The sight appears differently in everyone. For some, visions. For others, dreams. For you, conversations with possible futures." She shook her head. 

"The old woman will want you more now. Two seers in one body, she will tear the city apart to find you."

"Then we need to move faster," I said, standing and ignoring the protests of my borrowed body. "We need to find the others. Rafe. Brick. Anyone who'll fight with us. We need to build something before she destroys everything."

Mags looked at me for a long moment. Then she smiled, a real smile, warm and fierce, full of something I hadn't seen in years.

Hope.

"Alright," she said. "Let's get to work."

Later, as dawn broke over a city that didn’t know it was at war, we gathered in the tavern’s back room: Mags, Pip, me, and a handful of survivors from the night’s attack. The chaos of the night lingered, but they were battered, grieving, and terrified. But they were alive, and that was enough. 

Morning was there, his broken wrist freshly bandaged, his eyes wide with questions. Time slipped by as we took stock. Brick came an hour later, sober for the first time in months, carrying an axe that looked older than he was.

We were six people in a wrecked tavern, hiding from an enemy that had existed for centuries.

It wasn't much.

But it was a beginning.

Mags pulled me aside as the others talked among themselves.

"The old woman's name," Mags said quietly. "The real one, from before she became what she is. It's Morwen. If you're going to fight her, you should know who she was."

"Morwen." I tried the name. It felt heavy, ancient, and wrong.

"She was a hero once. A leader. A protector." Mags's good eye was distant. "Somewhere along the way, she forgot what she was fighting for. Don't make the same mistake," she warned.

"I will."

"Good." Mags patted my shoulder, a surprisingly gentle gesture from someone so tough. "Now go train. Rest. Prepare. She'll come again, and next time, she won't send amateurs."

She was right.

The next attack came three days later.

And everything changed