“Your hands, Boy.”

Dust sifted through the forest air, the only sound the old teller’s scratchy heaves.

“Give me them!” she snapped impatiently.

Ms. Melli turned over his palms, gauging them: dirt nestled underneath his nails with unkempt cuticles and calloused, sickly skin.

There they sat on a cobblestone dais; Rome watched with bated breath. For ten years, he had traveled through kingdoms and cities, searching for the full prophecy of his future.

Each time, the tellers would spew hoaxes or dance around ambiguous generalizations. None of them knew. Those more skilled gave him variations of the same answer: your future is an Unforseen—volatile and unpredictable!

But Melli? He trusted her, that finicky witch. Despite her quirks and odd mantras, Melli was powerful. For millennia, she had masterfully predicted the lives of the esteemed. Her counsel was a secret whispered only in the halls of royalty; and yet, Rome—through a year of book scouring—finally found her forest.

It was his resolve that impressed the old witch.

In each skeletal tree, each twisting blade of grass, Rome could feel the wisdom and magic teeming from the earth’s very energy. Its signature was unique, omniscient and complex like Melli’s. If anyone were to help him, it’d be her.

“Hmm,” Melli hummed. “Come closer, Boy.”

Rome inched forward.

She began tracing each crease in his palm with her ebony talons, muttering to herself softly. Each touch elicited feverish sparks.

When she completed the entire hand, her body shattered. Into a million black shards. At the speed of unfathomable light, the pieces dashed into his body, every part, and eerily cut into his skin.

His vision went pitch black.

“ROME.”

“…ROME…”

He was trapped in his own mind.

“ROME.”

A magnetic, alluring voice called out to him.

_“The relic of your undoing shall find your hands. _

_To hold it is to invite Death herself to a dance. _

To forsake it, is to abandon your chance—at living.”

__

__

Low hums scattered around the endless void. __

__

“When Death finds you—and she will—you will love her for it.”

__

__

High-pitched laughter flooded his hearing, echoing like a haunting melody: forever it lingered.

“Now it begins!”

Pure white flooded his vision as Rome dropped to the floor! When his sight came back, his clothes were tattered and his blood poured over the cobblestone. Dread gnawed at his throat.

Melli was gone; but there was a strange amulet presented before him.

Naturally, he reached for it.

And as Rome took it into his palms, the amulet’s red flickering faded gently. As though to say it was dying along with it, the forest sighed longingly...