The night stretched endlessly as they moved through the overgrown fields beyond the capital. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth, and every rustling leaf sent a jolt of paranoia through Jude's exhausted mind. They had escaped, but the weight of what they had done followed like a phantom at their backs.
Elara's grip on his arm hadn't loosened since they left the tunnel. Whether it was for his sake or hers, he wasn't sure. His head still pounded, his body screaming at him that what he had done was impossible, unnatural. A single moment of defiance against fate shouldn't have left him feeling like his very existence was unraveling, but it had.
Kazimir led the way, his usual smirk dimmed but not gone. "We're heading east," he muttered. "There's a contact of mine outside the city, someone who deals in making problems like us disappear."
"Define 'disappear,'" Elara said, her voice sharp with suspicion.
Kazimir flicked a card between his fingers. "Relax, Princess. I'm not selling you off to some back-alley Fate Scribe. Just getting us off the radar for a bit. The Order's going to have every Seer in the capital combing through time itself to find us."
Jude swallowed the bile rising in his throat. "And if they do?"
Kazimir sighed. "Then we make sure they regret it."
Jude wished he had that kind of confidence. His vision blurred again, and he stumbled. Elara caught him, her expression shifting from wary to concerned in an instant.
"Jude, stop pushing yourself," she said. "You're barely holding it together."
He pulled away. "We don't have a choice. If we stop, we die."
Elara opened her mouth to argue, but Kazimir cut in. "He's right. But we also need to be smart. If Jude collapses in the middle of a road, that's not exactly an advantage."
Jude clenched his jaw. "I'm fine."
"Liar," Kazimir muttered, but he didn't press further.
They walked in tense silence for what felt like hours. The glow of the capital faded behind them, replaced by endless hills and the occasional abandoned farmstead. The farther they got, the more the weight of their actions settled on Jude's shoulders.
Elara was alive. Fate had been broken. But something about it felt… incomplete.
The Fatekeeper's final words echoed in his mind.
"The system… is unraveling."
Jude hadn't just saved Elara—he had cracked something deeper. The Fatebound Order didn't just want revenge. They wanted to restore whatever he had broken.
And that meant they wouldn't stop until he was dead.
Kazimir suddenly held up a hand, signaling for them to stop. He crouched low, eyes narrowing at something in the distance.
Jude followed his gaze. A figure stood at the crest of a hill, silhouetted against the moonlight. A long cloak billowed in the wind, and in their hands, a heavy tome glowed with shifting golden symbols.
A Fate Scribe.
Kazimir cursed under his breath. "Damn it. They found us faster than I thought."
Elara tensed. "What do we do?"
The Fate Scribe raised a hand. The air around them shimmered, and golden threads of fate wove themselves into the night.
Jude barely had time to register the movement before the threads snapped toward them like whips.
He acted on instinct. His body protested, but he forced himself forward, blade flashing in the moonlight.
He slashed.
The threads resisted but then, impossibly, they frayed.
The Fate Scribe faltered, their glowing eyes widening in shock.
Kazimir moved next. With a flick of his wrist, a card shot forward, cutting through another thread. "Tch. I hate dealing with scribes," he muttered. "They always play dirty."
The Fate Scribe let out a slow breath, the tome in their hands pulsing with golden energy. Their voice rang out, echoing unnaturally.
"Jude Kastor. Elara Wyn. Kazimir of the Wild Cards."
Kazimir clicked his tongue. "Great, they know my name. I hate when that happens."
"Fate demands correction."
The golden threads surged forward again, faster this time.
Jude reacted on instinct, his mind racing. He couldn't just cut them—they were bound to something deeper. The threads weren't just physical constructs; they were the Order's will made manifest.
And he had already broken that will once.
He gritted his teeth, forcing his energy through his blade. If cutting fate wasn't enough—then he would rewrite it.
The air around him crackled. As the threads closed in, his sword shifted. It wasn't just steel anymore—it carried something deeper, an echo of what he had done to Elara's fate.
He slashed.
The moment his blade met the golden threads, they didn't snap, they unraveled.
A ripple shot through the air. The Fate Scribe staggered back as if struck, their tome flickering. The golden glow dimmed.
Kazimir whistled. "Oh, now that is interesting."
Jude didn't wait for the scribe to recover. He rushed forward, blade raised. The Fate Scribe barely had time to react before he was upon them. His sword came down—
A wall of golden pages erupted from the tome, forming a shield. His blade met them head-on, but instead of deflecting, the pages absorbed the impact.
The Fate Scribe whispered something under their breath. A single page floated from the book, dissolving into light.
Jude's body locked up.
Pain exploded through his chest, raw and searing, like something had been ripped from him. His vision swam, and for a moment, he wasn't sure if he was still standing.
Elara shouted his name.
Kazimir moved. A card shot forward, but this time, instead of attacking, it flickered—disappearing midair. A second later, it reappeared behind the Fate Scribe, striking their arm.
The scribe let out a sharp breath of pain, the glow around them flickering. Jude gasped, the invisible grip on him loosening.
Elara didn't hesitate. She surged forward, driving her dagger toward the Fate Scribe's chest.
They twisted at the last second, avoiding the worst of the blow—but not all of it. The blade nicked their side, and for the first time, they stumbled.
Jude forced himself to breathe. His hands shook. The pain was still there, lingering like something inside him had been burned away.
The Fate Scribe exhaled, gripping their side. Their golden eyes met Jude's.
"You are an impossibility."
Jude's grip on his sword tightened. "Yeah. I get that a lot."
The Fate Scribe's gaze flickered to the horizon. In the distance, the faint glow of torches was visible—Fatebound reinforcements.
Jude's stomach turned. They were running out of time.
Kazimir wiped sweat from his brow. "Alright, I'm calling it. Time to GO!"
The Fate Scribe didn't chase them as they retreated, but their whisper followed Jude into the night.
"The longer you resist… the worse it will become."
They didn't stop running until they were deep in the woods. The capital's glow was a distant memory, the only light coming from the thin sliver of moon above them.
Jude collapsed against a tree, his breathing ragged. His hands were still trembling.
Elara crouched beside him. "Jude, what happened back there?"
He shook his head. "I don't know." He looked at his hands. "I felt like… something was taken from me. Like they reached inside and tore out a part of me I didn't even know was there."
Kazimir exhaled sharply, leaning against a rock. "That's because they did."
Elara turned to him, eyes narrowing. "Explain."
Kazimir rolled his shoulders. "The Fatebound Order isn't stupid. They know brute force won't always work, especially against people like us. So they use their scribes to target something deeper—your existence in fate itself."
Jude frowned. "What does that mean?"
Kazimir's expression darkened. "It means that every time you change fate, they take a piece of you in return."
Silence.
Elara's hands clenched. "You mean…"
Kazimir nodded. "Yeah. The more Jude rewrites fate, the more of himself he loses."
Jude's breath hitched. He had felt it—the way his body recoiled after saving Elara, the way it cracked again tonight.
Elara shook her head. "That can't be right. He saved me, he changed my fate. That should be a victory."
Kazimir let out a dry chuckle. "Oh, it's a victory, alright. But every victory comes at a cost." He turned to Jude. "You felt it, didn't you? Back there, when the scribe used their magic on you."
Jude hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah."
Kazimir tossed a card into the air, catching it lazily. "That was your fate shifting against you. You're forcing reality to change, but reality doesn't like being rewritten. Every time you do it, you lose a little more of yourself."
Jude stared at the ground. "So what happens if I keep doing it?"
Kazimir's smirk faded. "You disappear."
Elara inhaled sharply. "No." She grabbed Jude's hand, gripping it tightly. "That's not going to happen."
Kazimir watched them for a moment before sighing. "Well, you've already done the impossible once. Maybe you'll find a way around it. But for now?" He gestured toward the distant horizon. "We keep moving. The Fatebound aren't going to sit around waiting for you to recover."
Jude forced himself to stand, ignoring the exhaustion weighing him down.
He wasn't done yet.
He had broken fate once.
And he'd do it again.
No matter the cost.