As Baelon opened his eyes, he found a familiar masked figure standing before him.
"You seem to have been expecting me?" Seryon remarked, his head tilting slightly, the pale mask catching what little light existed in this place.
"Why the surprise?" Baelon shrugged. His voice was calm, but his gaze drifted past the man almost immediately.
They were not anywhere he recognised.
The ground beneath his boots was blackened stone, cracked and warped as though it had once been molten. Ruined walls rose in jagged silhouettes around them, skeletal remains of buildings whose purpose had long been forgotten.
Towers, if they could still be called that, leaned at impossible angles and their upper halves sheared away, leaving broken teeth against a lightless sky.
No sun hung above. No moon. Only a dim, bruised glow seeped through heavy clouds, casting long, distorted shadows that refused to align with their sources.
Streets stretched out in unnatural straight lines, far too wide for comfort, vanishing into a haze of drifting ash.
Here and there, faint embers pulsed beneath the rubble, as if the city still smouldered long after its death.
A dead city.
No, worse than dead. Erased.
Baelon exhaled slowly, his eyes narrowing as he took it all in.
"Charming place," he muttered. "Did you choose it, or is this another of fate's little jokes?"
Seryon turned, regarding the ruins as though they were an old acquaintance. "A possibility," he replied. "One among many."
Baelon frowned, his attention snapping back to him. He studied the masked man more closely now, searching for tells, posture, tension, anything that might betray unease.
Alas, if Seryon felt disturbed by this place, he clearly did not show it.
"Your dreams," Baelon said at last. "They helped me understand myself. My fears. My ambition." His voice hardened slightly. "But why? What do you gain from all of this?"
For a moment, Seryon was silent. Then he let out a soft sound that might have been a chuckle.
"I have much to gain," he said. "Especially considering that what I am doing is merely to save my life."
Baelon's eyelids twitched. Still, curiosity welled within him.
The idea that some future version of himself, or some consequence born of his choices, had pushed Seryon to such caution gnawed at him.
"My future self," Baelon said slowly. "What did I do?"
Seryon shook his head. "I foresaw a possibility. Nothing more." He raised a hand before Baelon could press further. "Should I attempt to reveal it outright, the consequences may become…unpredictable. That is the nature of such things."
He gestured faintly toward the ruined city around them. "This is why I spoke to you through dreams. Warnings without chains. Guidance without direct interference. To prevent a future from occurring, without binding the present to a single path."
Baelon let out a quiet breath through his nose. "So you toy with my sleep instead."
"I educate it," Seryon corrected gently.
Baelon snorted. "And all of this…" He motioned to the ruins, "…was simply to tell me that?"
"Yes."
The answer came too quickly.
Seryon inclined his head. "Fate appears to favour me. And the future, for now, unfolds as I wished."
There it was. The quiet confidence. Not triumph, not relief, certainty. As though the path ahead had already been measured and weighed.
Baelon opened his mouth to respond, irritation rising, but Seryon spoke again before he could.
"I hope we do not meet again."
The tone was polite. Almost kind.
His words? Not so much.
Seryon bowed, the motion precise and formal, and as he straightened, his form began to unravel. Black mist seeped from beneath the folds of his cloak, swallowing his silhouette piece by piece.
"And," Seryon added as his voice echoed strangely, as though coming from very far away, "I wish you fortune in the plans you have laid for Astapor."
Then he was gone.
The mist dispersed, leaving only silence.
Baelon stood alone amid the ruins.
His eyes flicked to the place where Seryon had stood, then swept across the shattered city once more.
"He knows," Baelon murmured.
A short, incredulous laugh escaped him. "Of course he does."
He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers slowly. Power had always come easily to him, too easily, perhaps. And now, even the future seemed determined to meddle.
"By the Seven," he muttered, shaking his head, "do I hate people who can see what I cannot…"
The ruined city did not respond.
***
Seryon stood in silence within a dreamscape of his own making.
"Thankfully, that is all settled…" He patted his chest.
The scenery around him was familiar. It was the city of Asshai.
But this vision was far from the quiet, shadowed streets he had glimpsed before. The city now lay under siege.
A vast army, like a living wave of steel and banners, surged toward the walls. The ground trembled beneath their march, dust rising in choking clouds.
Above, three dragons spiralled in furious arcs, their wings slicing the air, each exhalation a torrent of searing flame that ignited rooftops and turned narrow streets into rivers of fire.
The defenders fought valiantly, but against such force, resistance was meaningless.
Stone towers collapsed under the relentless onslaught, walls crumbled, and screams, human, bestial, and inhuman alike, were swallowed by the roar of battle.
The city became a sea of flame; embers rained from the sky, and within moments, all that remained of its grandeur was ash and ruin.
As the fires consumed everything, the city dissolved into the familiar wasteland he had once seen with Baelon: blackened streets, shattered walls, and the pervasive, unnatural quiet of total devastation.
Then his eyes caught a figure atop the largest of the dragons, a manic bronze beast that thundered across the sky.
The rider's hair was silver, flowing like molten moonlight in the chaos, eyes a piercing violet that burned through the haze.
It was Baelon, older, far older than the boy Seryon had spoken with. The lines of youth had vanished, replaced with the sharp, uncompromising features of a man hardened by time and ambition.
His jaw was set with an iron resolve whilst his violet eyes glimmered with a cold clarity, the faintest trace of weariness at the edges, but otherwise unrelenting.
Seryon's gaze lingered, voice low and bitter. "Without memory, without emotion, the boy could find nothing to give him meaning. He gained everything but lost himself, his identity, his love…" A sigh escaped him, heavy and full of resentment. "By the Gods, do I hate these silver-haired freaks. Mad men, all of them…"