"Who was the woman at the tournament?"
No preamble again. Just the question, sharp and strange in the way only Isla can make it. He swallows the instinct to ask how much she saw, because of course she saw everything.
"Ala Quin," he says eventually. "Jedi Master. Good fighter. Skilled. Complicated."
Isla tilts her head, brown hair catching nonexistent light. She's thinking. That's never good.
"She confuses me." Isla says. "I don't usually get confused. But her future feels… doubled. Like she could be two people."
He frowns. "What does that mean?"
"I've seen her," Isla says. "With a red blade. A mask. She attacks you."
That drops like a stone. Cold. Familiar. Virginia had fallen too, once. Isla's mother. His first everything and his deepest regret. He tries to breathe through the sudden fog of memory, but it clings.
"No." he says, more to himself than to her. "Not Ala. She's... not like that."
Isla shrugs, and it's devastating how much she looks like Virginia when she does.
"I don't know." she says. "That's why I said it. I don't know."
That shakes him more than the vision.
Isla always knows.
But here she is, admitting doubt, her voice small for once. And somehow that makes everything worse.
"She's important," Isla says after a moment. "To you. To me. I don't know why i'm seeing this."
He doesn't respond. Can't. His thoughts are already in freefall, spiraling down old scars.
What if Isla's right?
What if he's about to watch another person he cares for become something monstrous?
He doesn't notice when Isla moves closer, but her voice is nearer now.
"Be careful, Lorn. The past wants to repeat itself. Don't let it. She's not my mother. And you're not who you were."
He wants to believe that. But belief is harder these days.
The garden starts to unravel, petals fading, ruins shifting, sky flickering.
Isla doesn't say goodbye. She never does.
Just gives him that unreadable look and says:
"You need to stop running from the things that hurt, or they'll find you anyway."
And then he's awake again. Cold. Alone. The ghost of Mirater on his skin and the warning still echoing in his mind.
