In the heart of the mountain, prophecy is not given as a word… but as a wound that opens a path.
Aram stepped into the Seer's cave with measured steps, as if the ground itself had learned to count his breaths. Wabbar followed slowly behind him, his ears shifting in every direction, catching what humans could not. The entrance was narrow, but the interior expanded in a way that unsettled the mind as though the mountain concealed within its core a second world, unrelated to the one outside.
The first thing Aram sensed was smoke… but not the smoke of fire.
It seeped from cracks in the ground, rising, curling, then sinking back again, as if the cave itself were breathing. Its scent was cold, like the smell of rain a moment before it falls that shiver that comes before wetness, telling the body the sky is changing.
At the center of the cave burned a blue flame.
Calm… silent.
No dancing tongues of fire. No heat that scorched. Only light filling the space without touching it. Aram extended his hand cautiously, then pulled it back. He felt nothing but lightness in the air, as if the flame were not fire at all… but a window into something he could not comprehend.
Ancient carvings stretched across the walls animals he had never seen, and shapes unlike any tribal script. Some were deeply etched, as if carved centuries ago. Others looked fresh, as though unseen fingers had drawn them yesterday. Each time he drew close to a particular symbol, a sharp twinge struck his head, as if the symbol were whispering… not to the ear, but to the soul.
At the far end of the cave, behind a curtain of thick violet smoke, the Seer appeared.
She sat upon a rock shaped like a small throne, her back straight, her face hidden beneath a black veil beneath which nothing could be seen no eyes, no mouth, no features. And yet Aram felt her gaze fixed directly upon him, as though her eyes were not in her face, but in the space itself.
She spoke in a voice that was not one voice but many at once: a woman, a priest, and the wind together.
"You have arrived, son of House Tamran…
You arrived alone, as was destined."
Aram froze.
He had told no one what had happened to his men. Not a soul. Not even the wind.
Yet the round crystal before her glowed, and its luminous half rippled like a wave.
And he saw.
He saw Sarob falling, poison beating the word.
He saw Yarin choosing to die in his place.
He saw the rock rolling as if pushed by a precise hand.
He saw shadows circling them in the night.
He saw himself… carrying the last companion, then standing alone before the mouth of the cave.
He stepped forward, his voice sharp as a blade:
"How do you know?
And if you are the one who sent the traps into our path say it now!"
The smoke thickened around her, and blue light reflected on the edge of her veil, revealing shifting shapes not a true face, but forms changing every second, as if trying on faces and discarding them.
She said calmly, in a voice that shook depths:
"I did not create a single trap for you…
The mountain did.
The path that leads to me knows who deserves to enter… and who must remain outside."
His grip tightened on his sword. One more step… then he stopped.
She said:
"Put down your sword, Aram…
This is a place where swords are not used."
Bitterness flickered in his eyes. The crystal's images of the fallen vanished, replaced by Wabbar, then Millia, then his mother… then black symbols he did not recognize. The images appeared as if drawn, then erased.
She said:
"What you endured was necessary…
So your old footsteps could be erased,
And your path reshaped."
Anger and confusion ignited inside him.
"I did not come here to begin a new path," he said, as if defending his former life.
"I have a tribe. A wife. A mother. Responsibilities."
She cut him off sharply, like a lash:
"You will find none of them when you return."
His chest jolted.
The sentence struck his soul, not his ears.
"What are you saying?" he demanded.
She raised her hand over the crystal. It darkened… then lit again.
Shattered images appeared and vanished like flashing shards:
House Tamran burning.
Black banners rising above tents.
Bound men dragged away.
Women screaming.
Dust—filled battle where no face could be recognized as friend or foe.
Aram shouted:
"No! That's impossible! No one has attacked us for generations!"
She replied:
"This time… they were waiting for you to leave."
The ground lost meaning beneath his feet.
He dropped to his knees without realizing it.
Wabbar stepped closer and pressed his head against Aram's shoulder, trying to return some sense of balance.
She said quietly, like reciting an unalterable verdict:
"Your path does not end here, Aram…
It begins.
If you return now, you will find only ashes.
If you remain here, what is left of those you love will perish.
You must go east…
To a land called Saba.
There, your new destiny begins."
Aram surged to his feet and shouted for the first time at the black veil:
"I will not abandon my tribe!
I will return, I will fight, I will gather men!"
The Seer raised her hand.
All sound vanished.
Silence thickened until it felt breakable.
She said:
"You cannot gather a single stone from Tamran now.
And one who seeks vengeance… must be born again."
She thrust three objects toward him, as though hurling fate rather than gifts:
A small leather pouch
• A dagger with a strange hilt
• A square black stone
"You will need these in your new life…
Take them.
Your refusal will not change what will happen."
Then she continued, as if carving a ring of words into him:
"You came to me for the birth of your child…
But it has become the birth of you.
Your son's instinct will be born with him…
But his destiny and the destiny of everything you know—
Will be determined by your journey to Saba."
Aram stepped back and said with desperate defiance:
"I won't."
At that very moment—
The blue flame went out.
The violet smoke vanished.
The crystal disappeared.
The Seer disappeared.
Everything was gone.
He stood in an ordinary, empty cave.
No carvings.
No symbols.
As if what he had seen were a heavy dream.
But at his feet lay the three objects.
He picked them up slowly and left the cave with a darkness in his chest he had never known before.
Not fear.
Knowledge.
He headed back toward House Tamran—
But he was no longer the Aram who had entered the cave.
He was a man carrying on his shoulders the deaths of ten men…
And a prophecy that did not lie easily.
The next day, on the return path…
He found Najjar.
Sitting near a tree.
His body smeared with blood.
His arm bound with torn cloth.
His face pale.
But his eyes still burned with unbreakable loyalty.
Aram ran to him and knelt.
"Najjar! What happened?"
Najjar lifted his head with effort.
"My lord…
The tribe was destroyed.
Tribes carrying western banners… black banners.
They killed the men… took the women…
They captured your mother… your wife… everyone.
And they were asking about you.
They want your head."
Aram gasped. His hands trembled.
He rose as if to run straight into death.
"If they want my head… then I'm going back to give it to them!"
Najjar seized him, eyes blazing despite the pain.
"Don't return now, my lord… you will die if you do.
You must flee… gather strength… prepare…"
Aram froze.
He remembered the Seer.
He remembered the word Saba like a blade pressed to his throat.
"The Seer said that…
She said I must go to Saba…
But my tribe… my mother… Millia… and my unborn son…"
Najjar managed a faint smile all he had left.
"Then do it, my lord.
Vengeance begins there… not here.
Go… so you can save everyone you love."
He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them with effort.
"Return as you were…
A leader… not a lost man."
Aram stood.
The air around him felt heavier than iron.
There were no longer two paths.
Only one.
And inside him ignited the first spark not of return…
But of what comes after:
The spark of vengeance.
The spark of salvation.
And the first step in a journey far longer than the mountain road…
A journey that would lead him to Saba.