I woke with a gasp that felt like drowning in reverse.
The darkness around me was wrong. Too warm. Too soft. Too alive with the sounds of sleeping people instead of the eternal silence that should have followed the sword's fall.
My hand went instinctively to my throat, expecting to find the wound that had killed me. Instead, I found only unmarked skin and the rapid flutter of my pulse.
A dream. It had been a dream.
Except...
I sat up carefully, trying not to disturb Elisabeth sleeping beside me in our makeshift shelter. The camp around us breathed with the quiet rhythms of the night watch. Guards patrolling. Horses shifting in their lines. The familiar sounds of the Baron's war machine at rest.
But that was impossible. We'd been marching for three days. We'd reached the forest. The ambush had—
A sharp stinging sensation along my upper right arm made me hiss between my teeth. I pulled back the sleeve of my shirt and froze.
There, burned into my skin like a brand, was the clear outline of a handprint.
Not red or inflamed like a fresh burn should be. Not painful, exactly. Just... present. Like it had always been there but I was only now noticing it.
The mark was precise. Every line and whorl of palm and fingers etched into my flesh with impossible detail. As if someone had pressed their hand against me while it blazed with heat that left impressions instead of injury.
I touched it experimentally. The skin felt normal. Unmarked. But I could see the handprint as clearly as if it had been tattooed there.
What was happening to me?
"Erik?" Elisabeth's voice was thick with sleep. "Are you all right?"
I jerked my sleeve back down and tried to calm my breathing. "Fine. Just... bad dream."
She sat up, instantly alert despite having been asleep moments before. "What kind of bad dream?"
How could I explain? That I'd dreamed of our deaths with such vivid clarity that I could still taste the blood? That I'd experienced three days of marching that hadn't happened yet? That I now bore a mysterious mark that made no sense?
"The mission," I said instead. "Just worried about tomorrow."
Elisabeth studied my face in the dim light filtering through our canvas shelter. "You're sweating."
I was. Despite the cool night air, my skin was damp with perspiration. My heart was still racing like I'd been running.
"It felt real," I admitted.
"Dreams often do. What happened in it?"
I opened my mouth to tell her, then stopped. How could I describe watching her die in my arms? How could I explain the helpless rage of failing before we'd even begun?
"We were found out," I said carefully. "Things went badly."
"Well, that's not going to happen," she said with quiet confidence. "We're smarter than that."
But even as she said it, I could see doubt flickering in her eyes. The same fears that had been eating at both of us since we'd entered this camp.
"Try to get some sleep," she said, settling back down onto her bedroll. "Tomorrow's going to be a long day."
I lay back down beside her, but sleep was impossible. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw flashes of the dream. The arrows. The blood. Elisabeth's face going pale as life leaked out of her.
The handprint on my arm seemed to pulse with its own heat.
What did it mean? Who had marked me? And why could I remember events that hadn't happened yet?
I spent the rest of the night staring at the canvas above us, trying to make sense of the inexplicable. When the pre-dawn call to movement came, I felt like I hadn't slept at all.
"Head count! Everyone up! Movement begins in one hour!"
The familiar words sent ice through my veins. This was exactly how it had begun in the dream. The same voice. The same urgency.
Elisabeth sat up beside me, automatically reaching for her hidden knife. "Here we go."
I watched her movements with horrible fascination. Every gesture matched what I remembered from the dream. The way she pushed her hair back from her face. The quick glance around to orient herself. The practiced efficiency of someone who'd learned to wake up ready for danger.
"Erik? You're staring."
"Sorry. Just... nervous about the march."
We packed our few belongings in the same order as the dream. Joined the same forming column in the same positions. Elisabeth disappeared toward the kitchen staff while I found my place with the supply wagons.
Thomas the stable master appeared at my elbow, already complaining about the early hour. "Another bloody forced march. These officers think horses don't need rest."
The same words. The exact same complaint.
I looked ahead and saw the column stretching into the distance. The same formation. The same faces in the same positions. Even the weather was identical—gray morning light filtering through clouds that promised rain later.
Everything was happening exactly as I'd dreamed it.
We began marching as the sun cleared the horizon. Through countryside that grew progressively more civilized. Stone bridges instead of ford crossings. Well-maintained roads instead of muddy tracks.
The same route. The same landmarks. The same sense of moving deeper into allied territory where danger seemed impossible.
By the second day, I was certain. This wasn't déjà vu or coincidence. Somehow, impossibly, I was reliving events I'd already experienced.
The handprint on my arm had grown warmer. Not painful, but present. A constant reminder that something beyond my understanding was at work.
On the third day, we entered the ancient forest.
I knew what was coming. Could feel it building like pressure before a storm. The peaceful cathedral of oak and ash trees. The false sense of security as soldiers relaxed their vigilance.
The killing ground ahead where professional archers waited in hidden positions.
I could warn them. Should warn them. Tell Sir Marcus about the ambush. Save the column from walking into slaughter.
But I found myself unable to speak. As if the knowledge was mine to carry but not to share. As if changing events was beyond my power.
Or maybe I simply didn't believe it would matter.
The first arrow came from nowhere.
The crossbow bolt sprouted from the throat of the man walking ten feet ahead of me. He dropped without a sound, blood spreading across the forest floor.
I watched it happen with sick inevitability. Knowing what would come next but powerless to prevent it.
The forest exploded with death.
Arrows flew from every direction. Men screamed and died. The ordered column dissolved into chaos exactly as I remembered.
I dove behind the same supply wagon. Crawled forward to find Elisabeth crouched behind the overturned kitchen wagon. Her face pale but determined.
The attacking soldiers poured from the trees like a flood of steel and fury. I watched the same three men break through toward the supply wagons. Toward Elisabeth.
This time, I didn't move.
I could have. The knife was still in my boot. My body still remembered the Guardian's training. I could have killed the first soldier before he knew I was there.
Instead, I stayed crouched behind the wagon and watched.
The first soldier reached Elisabeth's position. She fought with the kitchen knife, moving with deadly precision. But there were too many of them.
The arrow took her in the chest just as before.
She looked down at the shaft with the same expression of surprise. As if she couldn't understand how it had gotten there.
"Erik," she whispered.
I didn't run to her. Didn't gather her into my arms. Didn't try to offer comfort or hope.
I just watched as she died alone.
The enemy soldiers regrouped for their final assault. The tall commander with graying hair approached the scattered survivors.
He found me crouched behind the wagon. Looked down with the same expression of sympathy.
"You fought well," he said in accented Norse.
"No," I said quietly. "I didn't fight at all."
He tilted his head, puzzled by my response. But he raised his sword anyway.
"Any last words?"
I looked across the road to where Elisabeth's body lay still. Her hand outstretched toward where I should have been. Where I would have been if I'd chosen to die beside her instead of watching from a distance.
"Is this how it ends?" I asked.
The same question. But this time it felt different. Hollow. Like words spoken by someone who'd already given up.
The sword came down.
The darkness came gently.
But there was no peace in it this time. No sense of having chosen love over survival. No comfort in dying beside someone who mattered.
Just the bitter knowledge that I'd been given a second chance and chosen to waste it on nothing at all.
The darkness was cold and empty and exactly what I deserved.
This is how it ends.
Again.