A vision doesn’t foretell a person’s fate; it merely reveals their true nature, so the Oracle said. If that was true, then Liao knew he was well and truly fucked. Staring at the ceiling of his high raftered bed, grimacing, he tried to hold together the slipping memory of his dream.

The same vision he’d witnessed ever since he had taken the Seer’s trial still haunted him. It would always show the same fate. His home: razed. His family: killed. And he was possibly the reason for it all in his green-eyed immortality, akin to the coldness of his father. He was twenty-five; already a young man, already near the age of his vision.

Liao’s brown eyes blinked. His head pounded, mind still raw and reeling. The courtesan beside him stirred as he relit the rud pipe next to the bedside table, puffing out red smoke that soon filled the room. The light patter of rainfall tapped in muted disharmony overhead. Moonlight snaked through the shutters, cutting out the dark into pale blue shapes. A contentful breeze sifted in, wet with tepid droplets, though Liao felt a chill from what he'd seen, like a needle of ice worm into his spine and seeped into his blood. That feeling was numbed with the heaviness the drug rud lulled into his head, and soon mind.

Liao wasn’t sure of many things, but he knew his visions could one day come true. So far, all of them did. A Seer wasn’t called a Seer because they were prophets, it was because they could see the gods’ forsaken future. He knew that much at least. For a brief moment, he contemplated whether he should gouge out one of his eyes – because fuck his green-eyed future. Liao knew he didn’t possess the necessary willpower for such a thing, instead deciding to leave his room. The courtesan murmured for him to stay. Liao left her his rud pipe, and, donning his night robe, padded through the lantern-lit halls. Ignoring the bowing guards, he made his way to the Oracle’s chamber.

A guard opened the door into a room with too much space and little of anything else. The only light came from a brazier. The door behind him closed with a groan that echoed across the chamber, a sacred place only a select few in the Dynasty could enter. As son to the Emperor and heir to the throne, divine right granted him a place by the fire.

The Oracle sat beside the brazier. She was a wizened crone and had skin like creased leather and a crow's bead-like eyes. Noone knew her age. He suspected she didn’t either. She'd lived before his father had become Emperor.

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The old woman did not turn as he approached. She continued to gaze into the green fire.

“Are you alive today?” he asked.

“Today and for the next several,” she said.

Liao sat beside her.

"You’ve rud on your breath." Her scorn made her words acidic. "And now you've had another vision and come running to me like a little boy. How are we to know it’s not just the rud speaking?"

“I realized, walking here, that I don’t even know your name. Yet I’ve been coming to see you since—”

“Since you were twelve. My name doesn’t matter. Only the task of teaching you your Sight and interpreting your visions. Taking rud until you’re stuporous won’t ease your pain of knowing.”

Liao sighed inwardly. He was silent. The fire, unnaturally soundless, kept burning.

“What was your vision?” she said at last.

His hands clenched the arms of his chair, knuckles turning white. “My vision,” Liao murmured, “was that my family was destroyed, the stones’ smoked city was razed. And the only person I can tell this to is a Seer half-addled with Incense—as my father's gone to only the gods know where, and my mother’s drinking herself to death.”

He slumped deeper into his chair, the effects of rud wearing away, peeling away his mind from its numbness.

The Oracle produced a pouch and wafted her hand over the brazier between them. Jade dust fell into the fire, flaring with renewed green strength.

The old woman sighed. “You are a Seer. A Seer will experience a lifetime of visions, and not all will come true.”

“Yet all my visions do end up happening.” Frustration turned Liao’s voice ragged. “You don’t think this is important enough to tell my father?”

His father would listen to her, and could scry to him even if he was hundreds of miles away.

“It was a vision, nothing more,” the Oracle said, batting his question aside. “If that is all, I must commune with the flames.”

Liao suppressed the urge to snort. What she meant was to inhale the hallucinogenic vapors of raw jade Incense. He stood abruptly; his wooden chair grated against the smooth marble floor. He stalked out of the room.

The Oracle called out behind him, “Sweet dreams, Prince of Qei.”

The prince ignored her jibe. There was something in his vision he hadn’t told the Oracle. In the end, he saw a man’s pained face, and there was no mistaking his features. Liao had seen death. It was his own.