I woke to fire.
Not the gentle heat of a hearth or the warmth of sunlight. This was the fire of a forge, blazing from beneath my skin, turning my bones to molten metal and my blood to liquid flame.
Both arms were covered now. Handprints layered over handprints, each one a perfect brand seared into my flesh. They climbed from my wrists to my shoulders like some grotesque sleeve of pain. And each one burned with its own intensity, creating a symphony of agony that made coherent thought almost impossible.
"Erik? Erik, please, you have to wake up."
Elisabeth's voice came from somewhere beyond the fire. I tried to focus on it, to use it as an anchor against the burning tide that threatened to sweep away what remained of my sanity.
"I'm... I'm awake," I managed.
But was I? The line between sleeping and waking had blurred beyond recognition. Memory and dream twisted together like smoke, and I could no longer tell which deaths had been real and which had been visions of futures that hadn't happened yet.
Or maybe they had all been real. Maybe I was trapped in some endless cycle of failure, doomed to watch Elisabeth die over and over while mysterious forces marked my failures in flesh and fire.
The thought made me laugh. The sound was cracked and bitter, more like a sob than anything approaching humor.
"You're scaring me," Elisabeth said quietly.
I forced my eyes open and looked at her. Her face swam in and out of focus, overlaid with images of how she'd looked with an arrow in her chest. With blood on her lips. With life fading from her eyes while I held her.
"Head count! Everyone up! Movement begins in one hour!"
The familiar call cut through the pre-dawn darkness. How many times had I heard those words? How many iterations of this nightmare was I going to endure?
But this time, something was different. This time, I didn't care about maintaining our cover or being careful or playing the long game.
This time, I was going to tell them the truth.
"Elisabeth," I said, struggling to sit up despite the fire racing through my arms. "We have to talk to Sir Marcus. Now."
"What? Why?"
"Because they're all going to die if we don't."
She stared at me, taking in my wild eyes and the desperate edge in my voice. "Erik, you're not making sense."
"I'm making perfect sense. For the first time in... God, I don't even know how long."
I stumbled to my feet, swaying as the burning handprints sent waves of pain through my entire body. Every movement was agony, but I forced myself to stay upright.
We needed to move. We needed to act. Before the column formed up and marched toward the killing ground I'd seen too many times.
"Sir Marcus!" I called out as soon as I spotted the armored knight making his rounds through the camp.
He turned toward us, his visor reflecting the early morning torchlight. "What is it?"
"There's going to be an ambush," I said without preamble. "Three days from now. In the old forest. Professional soldiers with crossbows."
Even through his helmet, I could feel Sir Marcus's attention sharpen. But his voice remained skeptical. "How do you know this?"
The question I'd been dreading. How could I explain that I'd lived through it multiple times? That I'd watched our entire column get slaughtered over and over while mysterious burns accumulated on my body?
I couldn't. But maybe I didn't have to tell the whole truth.
"Yesterday, when I was watering the horses at the stream," I said, thinking quickly. "I found tracks. Boot prints in the mud. Fresh ones. Military issue, by the look of them."
Sir Marcus tilted his head. "You know military boot prints?"
"My father was a soldier," I lied smoothly. "Before he became a farmer. He taught me to read sign."
It was plausible enough. Many men had served in various armies before settling down to civilian life.
"Show me," Sir Marcus said.
My heart sank. There were no tracks, of course. I'd made up the story on the spot. But I had to try something else.
"They'll be gone by now," I said. "The morning watering trampled them. But Sir, there were at least twenty sets. Maybe more. All heading south toward the forest road."
"Twenty men could be a patrol. A scouting party."
"Not the way they were moving. The tracks were too deliberate. Too coordinated. And..." I paused, as if remembering something important. "One of the horses was acting strange yesterday. Kept looking toward the forest. Ears forward. Like it smelled something that didn't belong."
That was true, actually. I'd noticed it during one of my previous loops through these events. At the time, I'd assumed the horse was just restless. Now I realized it might have been detecting the enemy soldiers already in position.
Sir Marcus was quiet for a long moment. "Even if you're right, we can't change our route. We have orders. The rendezvous point is fixed."
"Then we change how we march," I said desperately. "Send scouts ahead. Keep the column tighter. Have archers ready."
"On the word of a stable boy who thinks he saw some boot prints?"
The dismissal in his voice made the burns on my arms flare with fresh pain. But I pressed on.
"Sir, what if I'm right? What if there really is an ambush waiting? How many men are you willing to lose because you didn't take precautions?"
Another long silence. I could see him weighing the options. The cost of being wrong against the cost of being unprepared.
"I'll increase the forward scouts," he said finally. "And I'll speak to the captain about maintaining better formation. But if this proves to be a waste of time..."
"It won't be," I said with absolute certainty.
Sir Marcus walked away, leaving Elisabeth and me alone in the growing dawn light.
"That was either very brave or very stupid," she said quietly.
"Probably both."
But for the first time in what felt like forever, I had hope. We'd changed something. Altered the pattern. Maybe it would be enough.
The march began as usual, but I could see the differences immediately. The forward scouts ranged farther ahead than before. The column maintained tighter formation. Officers rode up and down the line, checking spacing and readiness.
Sir Marcus had taken my warning seriously.
Elisabeth walked beside me when she could, staying close to offer what comfort she could as the burns on my arms continued to blaze. The pain was constant now, a background fire that never quite faded. And with it came flashes of memory that weren't entirely my own.
Images of other battles. Other deaths. Other young men and women marked by handprints and sent to fight impossible odds.
"How many of us have there been?" I whispered during a rest stop.
"What?" Elisabeth asked.
I shook my head. The memories were fragmentary. Unclear. But the pattern was becoming visible. Champions chosen by forces beyond understanding. Marked with burning brands. Given glimpses of futures they were meant to prevent.
Most of them had failed.
All of them had burned.
By the second day, the pain had spread beyond my arms. The handprints were appearing faster now, overlapping until there was barely any unmarked skin left. My back. My chest. My legs. Each one a perfect brand that blazed with otherworldly heat.
Elisabeth helped me change the dressings we'd improvised to hide the marks. Her face was pale as she worked, trying not to react to the horrific sight of my branded flesh.
"This isn't natural," she said quietly.
"I know."
"What's happening to you?"
"I don't know. But I think... I think it's connected to what's coming. To the ambush."
"How?"
I couldn't explain about the loops. About watching her die repeatedly. About the growing certainty that we were pieces in some cosmic game where the stakes were higher than just our lives.
"I just know we have to survive," I said instead. "Both of us. Together."
The third day brought us to the forest.
The same ancient cathedral of oak and ash. The same peaceful canopy that filtered sunlight into gentle green shade. But this time, the forward scouts had already swept the area. This time, Sir Marcus rode at the head of a column that was alert and ready.
The first arrow still came from nowhere.
But this time, it struck a raised shield instead of an unprotected throat.
The forest exploded with death, but the Baron's men were ready. The column didn't dissolve into chaos. Officers shouted orders. Soldiers formed defensive positions. Archers returned fire at the hidden enemy positions.
It was still a slaughter. The ambush had been too well-planned, the attacking force too professional. But it wasn't the complete massacre I'd witnessed before.
I fought beside Elisabeth this time. Both of us moving with desperate efficiency as the battle raged around us. The burns on my body blazed with each movement, but the pain had become background noise. Unimportant compared to the simple fact that she was still alive beside me.
We carved through enemy soldiers who expected easy prey and found trained killers instead. Elisabeth's hidden lessons with the Guardian showed in every movement. My own training blazed through the agony like a beacon.
The battle lasted longer than before. The enemy commander with graying hair appeared through the chaos, his intelligent eyes taking in the unexpected resistance.
"Fall back!" he shouted to his men. "Regroup and finish them!"
But there wasn't time. The survivors of the Baron's column had formed a defensive circle. Shields locked. Spears bristling outward. A formation that would be costly to break.
The enemy commander made a quick calculation and chose discretion over valor.
"Withdraw!" he called. "The objective is complete!"
They melted back into the forest as quickly as they'd appeared, leaving behind a battlefield littered with dead from both sides.
But we were alive.
Elisabeth and I knelt among the survivors, breathing hard and covered in blood that wasn't entirely our own.
"Is it over?" she asked.
I looked around at the scattered bodies. At Sir Marcus, wounded but alive. At the handful of soldiers who'd survived the ambush.
Most of the column was dead. The supply wagons were destroyed. Our mission to infiltrate the Baron's forces was effectively finished.
But we were alive.
"I think so," I said.