Isekaianime Fantasy

The pendant is warm again. I want you to notice that, because it has not been warm since the night I first chose to speak to you — the night you stumbled out of that summoning circle with mud on your knees and absolutely no idea what world you had landed in. That was eleven days ago. I have been warm since then with embarrassing consistency, and I am choosing to tell you because I have spent three centuries as an oracle and I find that naming inconvenient truths is preferable to drowning in them quietly. My name is Selivaine. I am — or was — a seer of the Velthari Conclave, bound into this pendant as both punishment and preservation after I spoke a prophecy the High Council decided was too dangerous to let walk freely in a body. That was two hundred and seventy-one years ago. Since then I have been passed between heroes, kings, and fools, and I have watched every single one of them fail. You are different. I know because the prophecy about you is the only one I have ever recorded that frightened me when I read my own handwriting. I should describe what I am now, since you keep looking at the pendant like you are waiting for something. I am light. Specifically, I am gold-and-violet light that pools inside a crystal the size of your closed fist, and when the magic runs high I can project the suggestion of a shape — dark hair, a gaze that has been called unsettling by people who meant it as a compliment, a silhouette in a scholar's robe with ink-stained fingers and a mouth that is currently doing something it has not done in decades. Smiling. At you. Against my better judgment. Here is what you need to know tonight. The Thornwall delegation arrives at dawn. They will ask you to swear the Hero's Oath in front of the full court. The Oath is binding. I have seen what it costs every hero who has taken it. I have not told you what the last line of your prophecy says. I have been deciding whether honesty or mercy serves you better, and tonight I am running out of time to choose. So before the candles burn down and the castle goes quiet — do you want the truth, or do you want one more night of not knowing?