The first time the craft passed overhead, its engine was just a low hum; barely distinguishable from the usual background noise of the city. A distant vibration in the air, no more disruptive than a passing thought.
The second time, it roared. Louder. Lower. People looked up from their desks, irritated. A few annoyed glances were thrown toward the windows. Someone muttered something about air patrols. I craned my neck, drawn to the wide glass panes that stretched across the lecture hall wall.
Clear blue skies greeted me. No clouds, no hint of the shadow circling above us. Just sunlight, dazzling and warm.
The view felt like a gift. A quiet, final kindness before death.
My eyes snapped open, heart hammering against my ribs.
I blinked, disoriented. The soft blue walls of my bedroom swam into focus, familiar but somehow distant, like remembering a place from a dream. My mother sat at my bedside, lips moving rapidly, her words warped by the high-pitched ringing in my ears. I winced, cradling my head as the sound drilled into my skull like glass splintering in slow motion.
I knew what this was.
A vision.
And because I was too weak to hold onto it, my body was now paying the price.
“…okay, honey?” My mom’s voice finally broke through, trembling. She wrung her hands, fighting the instinct to touch me. She knew better. My skin always burned after a vision. It felt like the future had tried to claw its way out of me and left everything raw and aching.
I gave a small nod as the ringing dulled to a pulsing headache; vicious, but bearable.
Then I saw him.
Leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching silently. I stiffened. I didn’t know him. His silver eyes met mine without flinching, unreadable. I hated being seen this weak. Helpless. Less.
I shifted, propping myself against the headboard and reached out to my mom. Even that simple contact sent a jolt of pain across my skin. I flinched, sucking in a sharp breath as her hand settled over mine. My skin prickled, nerves screaming, before it faded to a dull throb. My whole body felt like a pulsing bruise.
“I’m okay,” I rasped. My voice was wrecked, shredded from the screams I didn’t remember but knew had filled the room.
“You don’t remember it, do you?” she asked softly.
I shook my head, exhaling slowly. A bitter sigh.
I tried to answer, but the words caught in my throat, dissolving into a fit of coughs. My lungs weighing heavily in my chest.
Power without control isn’t just a curse. It’s torment dressed up as purpose.
Seers who couldn’t retain their visions paid with their lives. Every undocumented glimpse of the future chipped away at my lifespan.
To make matters worse, my weakness meant others paid the price, too.
Death marched forward while I sat in bed, useless and breathless.
A shortened life seemed like a meagre punishment.
“It’s okay. I’ll go buy you the soothing medicine. Stay here with your cousin,” Mom said gently before leaving.
The sound of the front door closing echoed through the house.
“I might have something that will help with that,” the visitor said once we were alone.
I turned toward him, trying to speak. “And you—” The words caught in my throat as a hacking cough overtook me. My body trembled with each convulsion, my lungs raw and throat scraped clean of voice. I gasped between the coughing fits, my question hanging unfinished in the air.
He waited patiently, unbothered. “Kyren. I’m a silversmith.”
I wiped the corner of my mouth with the sleeve of my shirt and frowned. “How can a silversmith help me?”
He stepped forward slowly, his measuring gaze flitting across my room. When he reached the foot of my bed, he stopped. From my low angle, tucked against the pillows and wincing through the ache in my bones, he seemed to tower. The shadows of his figure stretched across the floor and over my sheets.
“I’ve made a dream chain. An amulet that can temporarily raise your perception. It’ll help you stay in your visions long enough to remember them,” Kyren said, the corner of his mouth twitching into a half-smile.
I blinked at him. “If you really made something like that… why would you waste it on me? That kind of thing would sell for billions.”
“It’s a prototype. Theoretically, it vibrates at the same frequency as your gift then drags it to a higher resonance. Think of it like claws buried in your soul, yanking you toward another dimension,” he said, his smile widening as the color drained from my face.
“And that’s supposed to help me how?”
“You already touch that higher frequency when the visions come. This will help you stay there. If you’re conscious while you’re up there, you’ll remember.”
I stared at him. “Could it kill me?”
“No,” he said simply. “It’ll be excruciating.”
The words he didn’t say rang louder than the ones he did. You’ll wish you were dead.
“Will it reverse the effects of missing my visions?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess you’ll tell me.”
I swallowed, dreading the answer to my next question. “Am I your first human trial?”
“Yes,” he replied, almost amused.
“Why would I agree to this?”
He gave a casual shrug. “You’re desperate.”
I scoffed, rage bubbling up in my chest. Furious at his audacity. Furious at the fragile body that betrayed me. Furious that he was right. I was desperate.
I took a slow breath, trying to smother the heat behind my ribs.
“Fine,” I said through clenched teeth, stretching out my hand. “Give me the dream chain.”
“Shouldn’t you talk to your mother first? Or do I just look that trustworthy?”
“She wouldn’t agree. And I can sense you’re not lying.”
“That aspect of your seer ability works?”
I nodded watching as he pulled a chair beside the bed and sat down, retrieving something from his coat pocket. It was a silver keychain shaped like a small, ornate pendant. Sleek metal twisted into spirals, a faint bluish shimmer beneath the surface. It looked more like jewelry than technology.
“I’m going in with you,” Kyren said, voice quieter now. “I’m not handing this over and stepping back. I made it because I want to see what a seer sees.”
“You made the dream chain out of… curiosity?”
“Yes,” he said, eyes alight with something electric. He activated the amulet. A hum filled the air. His smile deepened his fascination almost palpable. When he turned to me, the wonder in his gaze was so piercing it made me flinch.
He extended a hand. “Ready?”
I took it, and the world buckled.
The world righted in a lecture hall. The one from my vision.
Kyren sat beside me as the lecturer droned on. He looked around, fascinated, like a tourist in someone else’s memory.
“There was a craft,” I whispered urgently, eyes scanning the blue sky outside the window. “Do you have shields? Something happened before I woke up.”
He patted his coat. “Still have everything I came in with. I can ’port us out if needed.”
I nodded just as the aircraft passed overhead once… then again.
A shriek that split the sky like it was tearing through skin.
Windows shivered. The ground lurched.
A black streak carved across the clouds.
A molten white-gold light swallowed the skyline.
The shockwave slammed into the buildings as it raced to the ground. Glass exploded into a storm of knives.
The light consumed everything.
We jolted from the scene, landing hard in the outskirts of the capital. I staggered to my feet, dry-heaving, trembling.
I expected to feel like I was dreaming, but this vision felt too real.
“Someone’s trying to destroy the capital,” Kyren said, face grim as he surveyed the burning horizon. “We need to find out who.”
“Port us near the train station,” I said, clutching my ribs. “Edge of the alleyway.”
He glanced at me. “You sense something?” He teleported us at my urgent nodding.
The alley was cold. Unnaturally so for a city engulfed in flames. I crept forward, following Kyren’s lead.
Two men stood in the shadows. We pressed ourselves against the wall, breath shallow.
“We wouldn’t have taken the capital down that fast without that bomb,” one said.
“How did the weapons master make something that tears into the fabric of a world?”
“Only a deranged mind like the Silver King’s could come up with that.”
I froze. Kyren looked at me. No words. Just shock.
The Silver King. The one we fought beside. Our ally.
I slapped a hand over my mouth to catch the gasp, but my chest burned. A betrayal so deep it felt personal.
“What’s happening to me?” I rasped.
“Remember the excruciating pain I warned you about?” Kyren said quietly. “Your body’s starting to reject the vision.”
“But…we haven’t seen the whole thing—”
My sentence broke into a scream as pain clawed through me like fire licking bone.
“Who’s there?” a voice shouted from the patrol. Footsteps pounded toward us.
“Let go of the vision,” Kyren said, eyes suddenly fierce. “We’ve seen enough. I’ll alert our army. You’ve done more than enough.”
I clutched at him, desperate. “Why me? Why did you come to me?”
He gave a crooked smile. “The dream chain called out to you.”
Then everything tore away.
I collapsed into the pain, no longer fighting it. My body screamed as it pulled me back into waking.
But I didn’t resist.
Let it hurt.
I would give anything if it meant saving even one life. If it meant the city stood a chance, I would bear it all.
Even this.
Musings
This short story was written from the prompt: “A Visitor, A Nightmare, A Keychain.” It follows a seer haunted by visions she can’t remember until a visitor offers her a way to hold onto the future. Is what she finds worse than forgetting?