Ren woke up with a headache.
Not the horrible, mind-shattering headache from yesterday — that would have been preferable.
This one was merely annoying.
He opened his eyes and stared at the wooden ceiling above him.
For several seconds, he remained perfectly still.
Then he remembered.
The potion.
The grey fog.
The impossible palace.
The twenty-two chairs.
The things he had seen.
The thing that had looked back.
Ren immediately closed his eyes again.
“Nope.” He pulled the blanket over his head.
“I am going back to sleep.”
Unfortunately, sleep refused to cooperate.
His mind kept replaying the final message.
Sequence 9 — Seer.
Successfully Consumed.
Advancement Requirement: Digest the Potion.
Act as a Seer.
And then—
The consumed characteristic has detected a compatible presence.
Do not allow It to awaken.
Ren slowly lowered the blanket.
“…I really don’t like that last part.”
He sat up.
The abandoned shrine was quiet.
Morning sunlight filtered through gaps in the wooden walls, illuminating floating dust.
Somewhere outside, birds were chirping.
Everything looked normal.
That was reassuring — for approximately three seconds.
Then Ren remembered that he had consumed a mysterious supernatural potion in a world he’d only been trapped in for a week.
He sighed and rubbed his face.
“Right.
Let’s start with what I actually know.”
He had consumed a Sequence 9 Seer potion.
He had survived.
His senses seemed sharper than before.
And the strange writing had told him to—
Ren paused.
“Act as a Seer.” He stared at the wall.
“…What the hell does that mean?”
There was, naturally, no answer.
Ren waited anyway.
Nothing.
“Of course.” He stood and brushed dust from his clothes.
“Fine.
I’ll figure it out myself.”
The first problem was the word Seer.
Fortunately, Ren had some vague memories about the term — not enough to be useful, but something.
A seer.
A fortune teller.
Someone who predicted the future.
Someone who saw things ordinary people couldn’t.
Maybe someone who interpreted signs.
Ren frowned.
“That’s…
basically it, right?”
He had watched a minimum number of movies and read some novels to have a general idea.
Crystal balls.
Tarot cards.
Mystical symbols.
Astrology.
Palm reading.
Tea leaves.
Some suspicious old woman staring into a bowl of water and telling someone they would meet a handsome stranger within seven days.
Ren nodded slowly.
“Okay.” That sounded manageable.
He looked around the shrine.
Then his expression fell.
There were no cards.
No crystal ball.
No magical jewelry.
No expensive gemstones.
No suspicious old woman.
Ren looked down at his hands.
“…I have absolutely nothing.”
He searched the shrine anyway.
He found a broken wooden offering box, a few scraps of paper, an old rope, a cracked bowl, several dry sticks, and some stones.
Ren picked one up.
“Crystal ball.” He stared at it.
“Nope.” He put it down.
“Obviously not.”
He continued searching.
There was a small broken wooden cup.
He held it up.
“Crystal ball.” He immediately shook his head.
“Still no.”
Ren sighed.
“Okay.
Cards.” That was easier.
He found a piece of relatively clean paper and tore it into several small rectangles.
Relative was generous as it was almost completely brown, allowing only the darkest mud to be able to be read on it.
He considered what to write on them.
The simplest method he could think of was assigning meanings to different cards: good fortune, bad fortune, danger, money, love, travel, illness, success, failure.
Ren stared at the last one he’d been about to write.
“Maybe don’t include death.” He removed it.
He made twelve barely readable “cards” in all and shuffled them.
They weren’t particularly impressive — the cards were uneven, some larger than others, and the mud had bled through several pieces.
Still, they were cards.
Ren sat cross-legged on the shrine floor.
“All right.” He placed them face down.
“If this works, I am officially a fortune teller.” He hesitated.
“What am I asking?”
That was a problem.
He thought for a moment.
“Will I have a good day?”
He drew a card.
Money.
Ren stared at it.
“…I don’t have any.”
He drew another.
Travel.
“That’s not useful.”
Another.
Danger.
Ren frowned.
“That’s probably accurate regardless of supernatural powers.”
Another.
Success.
He stared at it, then at the other cards, then back at the card.
“…Did I just make a children’s fortune-telling game?”
He shuffled them again.
Nothing happened.
No strange sensation, no sudden insight, no grey fog, no voice.
Nothing.
Ren sighed and gathered the cards.
He didn’t throw them away — they might be useful later.
He tried astrology next.
Ren knew almost nothing about astrology.
That didn’t stop him.
He found a piece of paper and wrote down the date, then stared at it.
“…I don’t know what day it is.” He scratched his head.
He had a rough idea of the year — that was it.
He didn’t know the exact date, the local calendar, the time, or where the constellations were supposed to be.
Ren looked up at the sky.
There were clouds.
“Excellent.” He sat back down.
“Astrology is going great.” He abandoned that idea.
Palm reading went slightly better — at least he had hands.
Ren stared at his palm.
Life line.
Heart line.
Head line.
Something about fate.
He knew there were names for them.
He didn’t remember which was which.
“Maybe the potion will fill in the gaps.” He ran his finger over the lines.
Nothing.
He squinted.
Still nothing.
He turned his hand around.
Nothing.
He tried the other hand.
Nothing.
He compared them.
Nothing.
Ren sighed.
“Apparently I am not a palm reader.” He considered trying it on someone else, then remembered he didn’t know anyone.
“Right.” He was beginning to understand the limitations of being stranded in a foreign world.
By midday, Ren had tried staring into water, arranging stones, throwing sticks onto the ground, and attempting to find mystical meaning in the movement of smoke from a small fire.
None of it worked.
At one point, he spent nearly an hour arranging pebbles into different patterns.
He stared at them.
Nothing.
He rearranged them.
Nothing.
He threw sticks onto the ground.
A pattern appeared.
He stared at it.
Nothing.
He threw them again.
Still nothing.
He threw them harder.
Nothing.
Ren eventually sat down among his various failed experiments.
He looked at the cards.
The cup.
The stones.
The sticks.
Then he looked at his hands.
“I’m beginning to suspect the problem isn’t the tools.” He wasn’t sure what the problem was, but he was becoming increasingly certain that it wasn’t a lack of sufficiently mystical objects.
*****
Ren went into the village later that afternoon.
The shrine was too isolated for him to experiment properly, and he needed food anyway.
He spent several hours doing odd jobs — carrying water, helping move sacks, cleaning a storage area, repairing a fence.
Nothing particularly difficult.
He earned enough for a modest meal.
While eating, Ren watched people.
This had become one of his habits — how they walked, how they spoke, who deferred to whom, who appeared wealthy, who appeared poor, who was armed, who looked nervous, who avoided certain streets, who greeted one another.
It was partly survival.
But now there was another reason.
If he really needed to act as a Seer, then he needed people.
People had questions, people wanted things, people worried about the future.
That much was universal.
Ren’s eyes wandered through the village.
Then he noticed an old man sitting outside a shop.
Ren had seen him before, several times, actually.
At first, he’d assumed the man was simply another elderly villager.
After watching him for a while, however, Ren realized he’d made a mistake.
The man owned the little shop beside the road.
It wasn’t impressive — the building was small, its wooden walls weathered by years of rain and wind.
A few baskets hung near the entrance, while sacks of rice, dried vegetables, simple tools, candles, and other necessities were arranged inside.
But it was a shop.
A permanent one.
Ren had gradually learned enough about this place to understand why that mattered.
A commoner who opened a business and expected to remain there had to believe he could protect it.
Not necessarily with a sword — reputation could be protection, relationships could be protection.
Knowing which samurai passed through the area, which lord controlled the surrounding land, which bandits were dangerous and which ones could be paid off — those things mattered.
A shopkeeper who had survived for years had probably accumulated connections without even realizing it.
The old man seemed to have exactly that kind of standing.
People stopped to greet him.
Farmers came by to sell things.
Travelers bought supplies.
A woman from another street chatted with him for several minutes before leaving with a bundle of vegetables.
Nobody treated him like a noble.
But nobody treated him like someone they could simply push aside, either.
Ren watched for a while.
Interesting.
Then he remembered something else.
The old man had mentioned his daughter, who had married into another village.
That probably meant more than Ren had initially realized.
A marriage wasn’t merely a romantic arrangement here — families became connected, obligations were created, information traveled along those connections.
If his daughter lived in another village, the old man probably knew people there: merchants, maybe, or farmers, or other shopkeepers.
That made him one of the most useful people Ren had encountered so far.
Not because he was powerful.
Because he was connected.
Ren smiled faintly.
“Okay.” He walked toward the shop.
The old man noticed him almost immediately.
“You again.”
“Good afternoon.”
“Do you need something?”
Ren glanced at the shelves.
“I was wondering if I could ask you something.”
“You asked me something last time.”
“I have more questions.”
The old man sighed.
“Then ask.”
Ren looked around before lowering his voice.
“What do people here think about fortune tellers?”
The old man’s eyebrows rose.
“Fortune tellers?”
“Seers.”
“Ah.” The old man studied him.
“So that’s what you’re calling yourself now?”
Ren scratched his cheek.
“I’m experimenting.”
The old man snorted.
“With other people’s futures?”
“Hopefully.”
“Hopefully?”
“Preferably before their futures happen.”
The old man stared at him, then, unexpectedly, laughed.
“Come inside.”
Ren blinked.
“Really?”
“If you’re going to say strange things, you might as well do it somewhere I can sit.”
The inside of the shop was cramped but organized.
Goods were arranged carefully along the walls, and a small counter sat near the entrance.
Ren noticed something immediately: everything had a place.
This wasn’t someone barely surviving from day to day.
The old man had a business — a modest one, but a stable one.
He had probably spent decades building it.
The old man sat behind the counter.
“Well?”
Ren sat opposite him.
“I don’t actually know how to do fortune telling.”
“I noticed.”
Ren coughed.
“But I have…
abilities.”
“What sort?”
“I don’t know.”
The old man stared at him.
“That’s not reassuring.”
“I know.” Ren hesitated, then decided honesty was probably better.
“Sometimes I get a feeling about something.
I don’t always know what it means.
Sometimes I’m right.
Sometimes I’m wrong.”
The old man nodded slowly.
“Then you aren’t a fortune teller.”
“Probably not yet.”
That answer seemed to amuse him.
“You want to become one?”
Ren thought about it.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Ren looked down at his hands.
“Because I need something I can do.”
The old man’s expression changed slightly.
He didn’t ask what Ren meant.
Instead, he said, “Then learn to listen.”
Ren looked up.
“Listen?”
“People who ask about their future usually aren’t really asking about the future.” The old man gestured toward the shop.
“Look around.
Why did that farmer come here yesterday?”
“To sell vegetables.”
“No.”
Ren thought.
“To make money?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the same thing.”
The old man shook his head.
“He came because his harvest was poor.
He wanted to know whether he could afford to wait another week before selling the rest.”
Ren paused.
“So he was worried about money.”
“Exactly.” The old man leaned back.
“People rarely tell you what they are actually worried about.
They tell you the question they think they are supposed to ask.”
Ren’s expression slowly changed.
That made sense.
The old man continued.
“If you want people to trust you, don’t simply tell them what happens.”
“Then what?”
“Tell them what they’re really asking.”
Ren frowned.
“Isn’t that dishonest?”
The old man shrugged.
“Sometimes.”
That answer caught him off guard.
The old man smiled.
“You wanted to know how to become a fortune teller.
You didn’t ask how to become a good man.”
Ren stared at him, then let out a small laugh.
“Fair enough.”
The old man pointed toward the road.
“You’ll learn more by watching people than by staring at stones.”
Ren glanced toward the small pile of divination stones he’d been carrying.
“…I’ve been doing both.”
“I can tell.”
*****
Ren returned to the shrine with a wooden cup the old man had given him.
He filled it with water and stared at the surface.
Nothing.
He waited.
Still nothing.
He leaned closer.
“…This is just water.” He sighed.
“Of course.”
He tried asking a question.
“Will it rain tomorrow?” Nothing.
“Will I find work tomorrow?” Nothing.
He stared at the water.
Maybe he needed moonlight.
He waited until night.
Nothing.
He tried candlelight.
Nothing.
He moved the cup outside.
Nothing.
He threw a pebble into it.
The ripples moved across the surface.
Ren stared at them.
Nothing.
“Wonderful.” He drank the water.
At least it wasn’t wasted.
The next morning, something strange happened.
Ren was sitting near the road, watching people pass.
A farmer approached.
Ren glanced at him, and for no particular reason, a thought surfaced.
He’s going to ask about rain.
Ren frowned.
The farmer stopped.
“Do you know if the rain will come tomorrow?”
Ren stared at him.
The farmer stared back.
“Well?”
Ren’s mouth opened, then closed.
“…Possibly.”
The farmer nodded.
“I thought so.” Then he walked away.
Ren remained frozen.
“…What?” He looked after the man.
That had been too coincidental.
He spent the rest of the day trying to reproduce it.
Nothing happened.
The following morning, he watched a woman carrying vegetables.
Again, something surfaced.
She’s worried about money.
Ren frowned.
The woman entered a shop.
A few minutes later, she came out looking disappointed.
Ren couldn’t hear the conversation, but the impression remained.
Money.
Not certainty, not knowledge — just an intuition.
Later, Ren learned that she’d been unable to sell all her vegetables.
He returned to the shrine that evening with a strange expression.
“So.” He sat down.
“The potion does something.” He looked at his hands.
“Maybe.”
He closed his eyes.
The sensation was difficult to describe.
It wasn’t like gaining a new sense — it was more like his existing thoughts occasionally became connected in ways he didn’t consciously understand.
A glance.
A movement.
A tone of voice.
A small detail.
His mind would sometimes put them together before he consciously realized what he had noticed.
Was that supernatural?
Or was he simply becoming more observant?
He didn’t know.
And that uncertainty frustrated him.
Ren needed a test — a proper test, something where he could know whether his intuition was actually doing anything.
He found two small stones, one darker than the other, and placed one in each hand.
He closed his fists.
“Which hand has the darker stone?” He stared at his hands.
Nothing.
He concentrated.
Still nothing.
He shook them.
Nothing.
He opened his left hand.
Wrong.
“Excellent.” He tried again, this time focusing on the question.
Left or right?
Something stirred — very faint, a sense of rightness.
He chose his left.
Wrong.
Ren stared at the stone.
“…That was disappointing.” He tried again.
Right.
Correct.
Again — left, correct.
Again — right, correct.
His eyes widened.
He put both stones down.
“What?”
He repeated the test twenty times.
His results weren’t perfect, but they were noticeably better than random.
Sometimes he knew immediately.
Sometimes he had no feeling at all.
Sometimes he felt certain and was wrong.
That last part bothered him.
Ren sat back.
“Okay.” He looked at the stones.
“This is important.” His ability wasn’t a perfect answer machine — it was closer to intuition.
The more immediate and specific the question, the easier it seemed to be.
The more complicated the question, the worse it became.
And if he didn’t know enough about the subject, the answer became unreliable.
That made sense, at least Ren hoped it did.
A Seer couldn’t simply ask “what will happen in the next ten years?” and expect a perfect answer.
If he could, things were going to become extremely complicated.
He looked at the stones again.
There was another problem — he couldn’t tell where the intuition came from.
Sometimes it felt like deduction.
Sometimes it felt like instinct.
And sometimes it felt like something else.
Ren didn’t like thinking about that last possibility.
His next experiment involved people.
Unfortunately, most people weren’t interested in letting a suspicious wandering man stare at them and predict their futures.
So he returned to the old man’s shop.
The old man looked at him.
“You again.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I have a question.”
“Then ask.”
Ren looked around the shop.
“Do you know anyone who might be willing to let me practice fortune telling?”
The old man stared at him.
“Practice?”
“Yes.”
“On who?”
“Anyone.”
“That’s reassuring.”
Ren sighed.
“I’m serious.”
“I know.” The old man thought for a moment, then pointed toward a sack.
“Take that outside.”
Ren blinked.
“What?”
“Take it to the back.”
Ren carried the sack.
It was heavier than expected.
When he returned, the old man said, “You’re still weak.”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t an insult.”
“It sounded like one.”
“It was an observation.”
Ren sat down.
The old man considered him for a moment.
“My daughter’s husband’s family knows a woman nearby.”
Ren’s attention sharpened.
“Really?”
“She asks too many questions.”
“Perfect.”
“I didn’t say she was interested.”
“Still perfect.”
The old man shook his head.
“You’ll meet her tomorrow.”
Ren smiled.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.” The old man waved him away.
“If she thinks you’re a fraud, don’t come crying to me.”
“I won’t.”
“And if she tells everyone you’re a fraud?”
Ren hesitated.
“…How likely is that?”
“Very.”
Ren sighed.
“Wonderful.”
The next day, Ren practiced with the old man himself.
The old man sat behind his counter.
Ren sat opposite him.
“I’ll try something.”
“You’ve been trying things for days.”
“This one is different.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
The old man sighed.
“Then begin.”
Ren took a breath.
He didn’t use cards.
He didn’t use coins.
He didn’t use the cup.
He simply watched — the old man’s hands, his clothes, his expression, the shop, the wear on his sleeves, the position of the goods, the road outside.
Ren let his mind become quiet.
Then — something appeared.
Not an image.
A feeling.
A road.
A house.
A woman.
Ren frowned.
He didn’t know what any of it meant.
He spoke slowly.
“You’re worried about someone.”
The old man’s smile disappeared.
Ren’s heart skipped.
The old man opened his eyes.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” Ren concentrated.
The feeling remained.
“Someone in your family.”
The old man stared at him.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then he looked away.
“My daughter.”
Ren’s stomach tightened.
He had guessed.
Maybe.
Or maybe the potion had helped.
“She’s far away?”
The old man looked at him sharply.
“How do you know?”
Ren couldn’t answer.
He didn’t actually know.
The impression had simply been there.
“She left several years ago,” the old man said quietly.
“She married into another village.”
Ren nodded.
“You’re worried about her.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The old man hesitated.
“She hasn’t sent word.”
Something shifted inside Ren’s mind.
A faint certainty — not an image, not a voice, just a direction.
“She’s alive.”
The words came out before he could stop them.
The old man’s expression changed.
Ren immediately regretted saying it.
He couldn’t possibly know that.
But the feeling remained.
Alive.
The old man stared at him.
“How do you know?”
Ren swallowed.
“I don’t.”
“Then why say it?”
Ren frowned.
“Because…
everything in me says yes.”
The old man remained silent.
Then, slowly, his expression softened.
“You are confident?”
Ren shook his head.
“No.”
That seemed to surprise him.
The old man looked toward the road.
“My daughter sends word through merchants when she can.
If she were dead, I’d likely have heard.”
Ren relaxed slightly.
“So I was right?”
“Perhaps.” The old man smiled faintly.
“Or perhaps you were lucky.”
Ren accepted that.
“Fair.”
The old man nodded toward the cards.
“You are still trying those?”
“Yes.”
“Then keep trying.”
Ren looked at him.
“Why?”
The old man shrugged.
“You’re going to need a way to make people comfortable.”
“Comfortable?”
“People don’t like someone staring at them while claiming to see their future.”
Ren nodded slowly.
“So the cards are for show?”
“Sometimes.”
“And the cup?”
“Sometimes.”
“The stones?”
“Especially those.”
Ren laughed.
The old man continued.
“But don’t misunderstand.
The tools matter less than the person using them.”
Ren became quiet.
That sounded familiar.
Act as a Seer.
Not use Seer tools.
Act.
The old man didn’t know anything about the Blasphemous Slate.
He didn’t know anything about Sequence pathways or potion characteristics.
Yet somehow, he had stumbled onto the same conclusion Ren had been approaching.
The tools were secondary.
The role was what mattered.
Ren began returning to the shop — not every day, since he didn’t want to become a nuisance, but whenever he had spare time, he’d stop by.
The old man never formally called himself Ren’s teacher.
There were no lessons, no declarations, no promises.
Ren simply asked questions, and the old man answered the ones he felt like answering.
Ren listened.
He learned the names of several nearby villages.
He learned which roads were safe enough for travelers, which merchants were honest and which were merely greedy or outright thieves, which armed groups could be ignored and which should never be looked at directly.
He learned that the old man’s daughter lived in a village roughly half a day’s travel away, that she had married into a family of farmers, and that the old man still received messages from her through traveling merchants.
And, most importantly, Ren learned that the old man’s shop was one of the places where information naturally accumulated.
People came to buy things.
They talked, complained, shared rumors, asked questions, traded news.
The old man listened.
Ren listened with him.
It was almost accidental — but it was exactly what Ren needed.
A Seer needed information, and information came from people.
The old man understood that instinctively.
Ren was only beginning to understand it.
One afternoon, Ren brought out his handmade cards.
The old man looked at them.
“What are those?”
“Fortune cards.”
“They look terrible.”
“I made them myself.”
“I can tell.”
Ren sighed.
“Can you at least pretend to be impressed?”
“No.”
Ren laid the cards across the counter.
“I’m trying to determine whether different symbols give different impressions.”
The old man picked one up.
“What does this mean?”
“Money.”
He picked another.
“Travel.”
Another.
“Danger.”
The old man looked at the final card.
“What does this one mean?”
Ren stared.
He’d forgotten what he’d written.
“…I don’t remember.”
The old man burst out laughing.
Ren covered his face.
“This is going terribly.”
“Perhaps you should find a better occupation.”
“You’re supposed to encourage me.”
“I’m old.
I have no obligation to encourage anyone.”
Ren smiled despite himself.
Then the old man looked at the cards again.
“You know what your problem is?”
“What?”
“You’re trying too hard to make the future complicated.” He tapped one of the cards.
“You want the cards to tell you everything.” He put the card down.
“But people don’t need everything.”
Ren looked at him.
“Sometimes they only need to know whether they should take the road north or south.”
Ren stared at the cards.
That was another useful lesson.
Not every question required some grand prophecy.
A Seer could provide small answers — useful answers, answers people could actually act upon.
Ren gathered the cards.
“I think I understand.”
The old man grunted.
“Good.”
His next experiment involved people in earnest.
Thanks to the old man’s connections, Ren finally began getting opportunities to practice with people who were willing to humor him.
His first customer paid him with two eggs.
The second gave him a handful of vegetables.
The third asked for a prediction about his future, then decided Ren was a fraud when the answer wasn’t specific enough.
Ren spent twenty minutes explaining that divination was complicated.
The man demanded his money back.
Ren hadn’t even been paid.
By sunset, Ren had earned enough food for one meal.
He sat beside the road, staring at his dinner.
“…I’m going to starve as a fortune teller.” He took a bite, chewed, swallowed, then smiled.
Because despite everything — he had done it.
He had acted as a Seer.
And somewhere deep inside him, something felt slightly more settled.
Ren stopped chewing.
The strange pressure from the potion was still there, but it wasn’t pressing against him as hard as before.
It had diminished — only slightly, but he could feel the difference.
Ren stared into the distance.
Maybe the instruction hadn’t been a warning.
Maybe it had been a solution.
If the potion had to be digested through acting as a Seer, then every fortune he gave, every person he helped, every attempt he made to understand the future — they were slowly changing him.
Ren smiled.
“Then I just need to keep doing it.” He paused, and looked toward the grey fog that only he could see.
“And hopefully nothing else happens.” The fog remained silent.
Ren decided to take that as a good sign.
A moment later, a child ran past him.
Ren glanced at the boy, and a faint impression surfaced: he’s going to trip.
Ren sighed.
“Hey.” The child turned.
“Watch your—”
The boy tripped over a stone and landed in the dirt.
Ren stared.
The child stared back.
Ren slowly raised one finger.
“I knew that was going to happen.”
The child began crying.
Ren immediately regretted everything.
“…I should’ve stopped you.” He got up and helped the boy to his feet.
As he brushed the dirt from the child’s clothes, a strange thought occurred to him: perhaps being a Seer wasn’t about knowing everything.
Perhaps it was about seeing something before others did — and deciding what to do with that knowledge.
Ren looked toward the setting sun.
The thought felt wrong but at the same time, right.
For once, he trusted it.
He gathered his things and returned to the shrine.
He still had no crystal ball, no tarot deck, no expensive gems, no mystical robes, no grand title — just a handful of crude cards, a few coins, some stones, a wooden cup, and a supernatural intuition he barely understood.
It wasn’t much.
But it was enough to start.
Ren sat beneath the shrine’s roof and looked at the grey fog that appeared before him.
The familiar white letters emerged.
Sequence 9 — Seer.
Below it, a second line appeared.
Advancement Requirement: Digest the Potion.
Ren stared at it, then smiled.
“I know.” He looked down at his ridiculous handmade cards.
“I’m working on it.”
The words vanished.
Ren shuffled the cards.
Tomorrow, he decided, he would try again.
Maybe he would learn a better method.
Maybe he’d find someone who actually knew what a Seer was.
Maybe he’d discover a completely different way to use his powers.
Or maybe he’d spend another entire day throwing sticks onto the ground and pretending they meant something.
Either way — he had finally found something he could do.
Something that didn’t require him to be stronger than the men carrying swords.
Something that didn’t require money.
Something that didn’t require him to belong to a village or serve a lord.
He could observe.
He could interpret.
He could predict.
And if he could make people believe in his predictions, perhaps he could make a living.
Ren leaned back against the wooden wall.
For the first time since arriving in this world, he felt something close to hope.
Not the blind kind — not the kind that told him everything would be fine.
Just a small, stubborn belief that perhaps he could build something for himself here.
He closed his eyes.
A thought surfaced.
Tomorrow will be better.
Ren opened one eye.
“…Was that a prediction?”
Silence.
He laughed.
“Guess I’ll find out tomorrow.”
And for the first time since drinking the potion, Ren went to sleep without wondering whether he had made the biggest mistake of his life.
He still had no idea what a Seer truly was.
But he was beginning to learn how to become one.