Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

"I was reborn with memories of the future."

Freya stays still.

The light coming through the curtains reaches half her face, leaving the other half under a bluish shadow. Her eyes are still red, and faint wet marks are still visible beneath them. She holds my gaze long enough that I start to hear the distant sounds of the tower again.

Then she waits.

Maybe she expects me to smile. To finish the sentence with some less absurd explanation, or admit I picked a terrible moment for a joke.

I do none of that.

"Are you serious?" she asks.

"I am."

Freya looks away and lets out a short breath through her nose. Her hand reaches for the cup on the desk, then stops before touching it.

"Memory of Lightwaves."

"What about it?"

"Your skill works with memories. I can feel Eventide carrying the styles of old bearers, and you just used their experience to fight me. A weapon says more than words; that was never a secret to me. It would explain how you know things you never lived."

"It would explain it better than the truth."

She looks at me again.

"So that’s it? You expect me to throw out a possible explanation and believe you died, went back in time, and decided to show up in my life?"

"I didn’t decide to show up in your life today. I looked for you. It was my choice from the start."

The answer doesn’t help.

Freya moves away from the window and starts walking slowly around the room. Her arms are crossed again, though her posture hasn’t recovered the firmness it had before.

"How far into the future are you talking about?"

"Years."

"How many?"

I hesitate.

Some dates carried too many important events to be thrown into a single conversation. Explaining the exact moment of my death would mean talking about Valerius, the altar, the Aion Codex, and everything that happened before I opened my eyes again.

Freya catches my pause.

"You said you’d tell me everything."

"I said I’d explain how I know you."

"That isn’t an explanation, Dryden. It’s an impossible story with pieces missing."

"I died. When I woke up, I was back in the past with every memory I had before."

"How?"

"I can’t explain that part yet."

Her face closes.

"Of course not."

"There are things tied to my return that would put you in danger just by knowing them."

"But knowing I’m going to die a tragic death doesn’t?"

The question shuts me up. Unfortunately, she’s right.

Freya drops her arms and takes another step toward me.

"You waited for me to tell you about my mother. You talked about Dean, offered to pay my debt, and said you’d known me longer than I could imagine. I believed you were talking about something real between us."

"It was real. It is real."

"And now you say you know me because you watched my life happen?"

"I knew what was left on record. I was never great enough to come close to who you’ll become in the future."

"Then you didn’t know me."

The sentence comes without force, but it lands harder than any accusation.

Freya points at the shelf.

"Did you know about those?"

I look at the wooden pegasi.

"No."

"Did you know I kept this room?"

"No."

"Did you know what my mother said that day?"

"No."

She nods slowly, as if confirming something to herself.

"You knew a story about me. Maybe some fights, some interviews, and the name I left behind after I died. You didn’t know the person who just cried in front of you."

"You’re right."

Freya seems surprised that I admit it.

"I knew the woman you became and the way the world remembered her. I’m meeting the real you now."

"And that’s supposed to make anything better?"

"I don’t know for sure, but I believe it does."

She moves away again.

The room has grown smaller. The same objects that seemed to reveal a part of her before now make my presence here feel like an intrusion. I used what I noticed to reach a wound nobody ever touched, and the moment Freya finally let the shield drop, I handed her a truth that made everything I’d said suspect.

"The offer stands," I say. "The debt, Dean, and the guild don’t depend on you believing me."

"But they depend on me trusting you."

"Yes."

"How do you expect me to do that now?"

I don’t find an answer that doesn’t sound rehearsed.

Freya finally takes the cup, but her hand starts trembling again. She sets it back on the table without drinking, plainly annoyed that she can’t even manage to drink her own tea.

"You offer freedom, and right after, you say you know my future. How do you expect me to make any decision without asking myself whether I’m just following a path you already chose?"

"I didn’t tell you to control your choices."

"You didn’t have to mean to."

"But I know a future where your choices, without me stepping in, don’t end well."

She looks at me directly.

"From now on, every time you say something is dangerous, I’ll wonder if you saw it happen. When you ask me to trust someone, I’ll think you already know the outcome. If you try to stop me from doing anything, I’ll never know if it’s worry or if you’re trying to push my life toward the future you want."

"I’m trying to stop the same future from happening."

"So you’ve already decided you know better than all of us!"

The irritation starts to build in her voice.

"I know what happened to me."

"To another version of me."

"Yes, but it was still you."

"A woman who made choices I don’t even know yet."

"That too."

"And you walked in here saying you knew me better than I thought."

I lower my eyes.

"I’ll admit it... That was a bad way to put it."

"It was a cruel way."

The silence that follows lasts longer than any of the others.

I knew details that could prove part of the story. Techniques Freya would still develop, names of missions no one had been given, events connected to Dean she’d have no way to imagine. I’d only have to pick one and wait for time to confirm it.

But every proof would tear another piece of her life away before she had the chance to live it. I’d be turning future losses, choices, and wounds into arguments used to win a discussion, and that wasn’t right.

"I could try to prove it," I say. "But any proof would be one more thing from your life that I’d hand over before its time."

Freya lets out a low laugh, without humor.

"Convenient."

"I know how it sounds."

"Do you really?"

She steps closer, until she’s standing right in front of me.

"Was the friendship part of your plan too? Did you want a person at your side, or did you want your great idol from the future inside your guild?"

"At first, I looked for the woman I remembered."

The answer hardens her face.

"And now?"

"Now I’m trying to know the person in front of me."

Freya closes her eyes for a moment.

When she opens them, she’s reached her limit.

"Get out."

I don’t move.

"Freya—"

"No."

She crosses the room and opens the door.

"I accepted your help because I thought you were offering me a choice. I didn’t accept being treated like a story you’d already read to the end."

I get up from the bed. My body still carries the exhaustion, but it responds better than before.

As I pass her, I stop by the door.

Freya keeps a hand on the knob. Her face is firm, though her eyes are still wet. But this time I can’t tell if it’s anger or disappointment. Maybe both.

"But you know... I can tell you this much, as a desperate person who saw it all. Two years from now, Thirstfall is going to change, no matter your choices or mine. It’s going to happen."

She doesn’t answer.

"Everything we call hell today is going to get worse. The rules that keep the cities standing, the Rankings, and the way we understand this world are going to collapse. A calamity is going to hit Thirstfall, Ocean’s Law is going to change, and people who could survive will die because no one will be ready."

Her hand tightens on the knob.

"I’m not telling you this so you’ll obey me. I’m telling you because in the future I know, I couldn’t stop the damage. Nobody could. The surprise was a catastrophe for the entire world. This time, I need people who can change the outcome with me, because I know the way."

Freya looks out into the hallway, avoiding my face.

"And you think I’m one of those people?"

"You always were."

She hesitates.

For an instant, I think she’ll ask for something. A name, a date, any detail that could turn my claim into a concrete threat.

Freya only opens the door wider.

"Get out, Dryden."

I obey.

The door closes behind me carefully. No slam, no sound of things breaking. Just the click of the latch, quiet enough to make the distance between us even clearer.

I stand in the hallway for a few seconds.

Outside that room, the tower has recovered its noises. Staff walk the lower floors, messages cross the COMMs, and far off, the arena is still alive with the movement Rahul’s event stirred up.

I start walking.

Revealing the future had always seemed simple when I imagined only the benefit. Warn someone about an ambush, prevent a death, prepare a city before a disaster. In practice, every truth changed the person who received it before it changed the event.

If I hid everything, I’d turn my allies into pieces of a plan only I understood. If I told them, I’d load them down with the weight of decisions they hadn’t even made yet.

Even my memories were no longer a guarantee. Every different choice pushed this world further from the one I knew. People who should be dead kept breathing. Relationships that never existed were forming. Events moved up or vanished because I touched them early.

Even so, the biggest mistake in Freya’s room hadn’t been philosophical.

I told her I knew her.

I knew her victories, the techniques she’d develop, and the way her name would end up in the records. I knew which missions would turn her into a legend and how her story would end.

But... I didn’t know she drank sweet tea.

I didn’t know about the stars on the ceiling, the doll with the crooked spear, or the pegasi she’d kept since she was a child. I didn’t know her mother’s last promise still lived inside her, repeated every time the tears threatened to fall.

The Freya I admired and the woman who had just thrown me out weren’t different people. The problem was mistaking the end of the story for the whole person.

I go down the last steps of the tower and reach the passage that leads back to the Oathring.

The sound of the crowd grows. Guards try to organize the buyers, workers move fresh crates, and the glowing sigil of the Silver Fang holds over the commercial sector. Richard is talking to two supervisors at once, while Leona uses magic to announce the future sale points. She’s standing on top of the coach, waving her arms like a one-woman flag.

The world keeps moving.

I look one last time toward the library tower, already disappearing on the horizon behind so many other buildings.

I had offered Freya freedom and, minutes later, handed her a future that could trap her another way.

I don’t know if telling her was the right call.

I only know that the truth, once spoken, no longer belongs to me.

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