I Am Seer - Book 3

Chapter 10 - Time

It was freezing cold. Inside my gloves, my fingers were curled into a fist, and I couldn't straighten them any longer. How many hours had I been out here at this point? The sun was coated in thick clouds which made it impossible to tell the time, but I knew it had been longer than Bohai had wanted it to take. By now, he was likely chomping at the bit to get Ha-Won to allow him to come find me, but I didn't want them to. Not again.

The wind picked up, cutting through the thick layers of my clothes like a recently sharpened blade through newly churned butter. From my creeping exhaustion, I knew I'd been here for a day and the better part of the night, too, but I didn't want to give in. I'd been training with various weapons—including hand-to-hand combat—for months already, but Ha-Won had always brought me back to this trial as if the other training was only a distraction from what I truly needed to do.

Deep down inside, I knew this was the real challenge standing between me and learning how to control my abilities as Seer. That knowledge had driven me to desperation the last time, and I'd struck off in a random direction, hoping I'd chosen the correct path despite not having seen it. It had been a foolish idea, and I'd ended up almost dead back at the Eighth. Ha-Won hadn't permitted me to scale Krimoa for two months afterward which was why I so desperately wanted to succeed this time.

"Do you really want to know what your problem is?" Eun-Tak's voice danced on the wind around me, and I lowered my head, shutting my eyes. "You spend all your time looking and listening to the outward. You're constantly worried about this and that, and you don't truly know how to recognize your own voice, because you've buried it beneath your fear. If you want to succeed—if you want to change your destiny—you must look inwards..."

It was a nice theory, but as much as I'd tried to listen to her, I couldn't seem to put her words into practice. Yes, I was afraid: afraid that at any moment the people around me might turn into horrible beasts who would tear me apart...and afraid of myself and what I might be capable of.

"Shut out all the voices around you and accept who you are. That's the only way you'll get stronger. You're a Seer. You're powerful and dangerous, but all you've ever thought about is how scared you are—whether that's of yourself or other people. Let that all go. Stop losing yourself in the uncertainties of the future, and find a way to exist in the present. Right here. Right now."

The words replayed in a tantalizing dance through my head, and I lifted my face toward the imposing sky. Drawing a breath of the biting air, I kept my eyes closed to keep myself from being distracted by the bleakness of my surroundings. Out of habit, I reached for Kotaro's bracelet for comfort, but this time, my wrist was empty, and I remembered Ha-Won had taken it away before they'd left me behind. He'd taken everything that might remind me of anyone or anything other than the task at hand.

I wrapped my arms around myself, and my throat tightened as I tried to keep myself from thinking about how long it had been since I'd seen Kotaro last. In the long seven months that had passed, I'd barely dreamed of him at all, but that hadn't proved to be enough to erase him from my memories. I had to do this for him, so that—

My brain stopped. I was doing it again. I was cowering on the hillside and thinking of a hundred reasons why I needed to succeed without actually doing anything about it. Clenching my hands into tighter fists and squeezing my eyes even tighter shut, I tried to cleanse my mind of my thousands of wrestling thoughts. If I didn't, I was going to fail again.

For a moment, I remained utterly still as I attempted to regain control over my treacherous mind, and as the minutes passed, something deep within me began to move. A voice cried out for help, and the sound enveloped me in a chilling embrace. I flinched, and tears welled beneath my closed eyelids as I relaxed slightly out of shock. I knew that voice too well. It was mine.