Chapter 34 Cassia's Vision

Chapter 34 Cassia's Vision
Maya's POV

I was sketching plans for the impossible heist when reality tore open in my studio.

Not violently. Gently, like someone parting curtains. Oracle Cassia stepped through, her age shifting with every breath—young, old, ancient, newborn, all at once.

"Don't scream," she said. "Your family can't know I'm here. The Council would consider this interference."

My hand was already reaching for my phone to call Dante. "What do you want?"

"To show you the truth." Cassia's swirling eyes fixed on me. "Before you commit to stealing from the Council vault, you need to see what I see. The actual futures awaiting your family. Not the sanitized version Theron presented."

"I don't want to see—"

She touched my forehead.

The world exploded into visions.

FUTURE ONE: THE SEVERANCE

I saw myself two weeks from now, sitting in a courtroom that existed between dimensions. Theron spoke words I couldn't hear. Light surrounded our family—blinding, painful, absolute.

Then nothing.

The vision jumped forward. I was in my studio, painting a commissioned portrait. Technically perfect. Emotionally dead. I smiled at the client, accepted payment, and felt nothing.

Dante was at Rossi Ink, giving someone a tattoo of their girlfriend's name. He worked mechanically, no artistic passion, no deep understanding of love. Just a job.

Lily was in middle school, normal kid, normal life. No magic. No wishes. No memory of dimensional tears or shadow creatures or parents who'd once been extraordinary.

We were alive. Safe. Together.

And completely hollow.

I watched myself go through the motions—cooking dinner, kissing Dante goodnight, tucking Lily in. But something was missing. Some essential piece of our souls had been cut out, leaving empty spaces we couldn't even remember existed.

"This is the safe path," Cassia's voice echoed through the vision. "Normal life. No danger. No threats. Just quiet emptiness forever."

FUTURE TWO: THE FUGITIVES

The vision shifted violently.

We were running. Always running.

I saw Lily at age ten, sleeping in a different motel room, our family on the move again because the Council had tracked us down. Her childhood was a blur of fake names and midnight escapes.

Dante taught her to fight. I taught her to hide her magic. We loved her fiercely, desperately, but she grew up knowing only fear.

Age thirteen—Lily accidentally used wish magic in front of humans. Council enforcers descended. We barely escaped, leaving another temporary home burning behind us.

Age sixteen—Lily looked at us with exhausted, ancient eyes. "I wish you'd just let them seal our magic. At least then I could have had a normal life."

"We were trying to save you," I said in the vision.

"You saved the magic," Lily replied. "Not me."

She walked away. We never saw her again.

"This is the rebellious path," Cassia said. "You keep your power but lose everything else. Your daughter grows up hunted, never safe, eventually hating you for the choice you made."

FUTURE THREE: THE CORRUPTION

This vision was darker. Wronger.

Five years from now. Rosewood Falls was burning.

But not with normal fire. With magical fire—the kind that burned souls instead of buildings. People ran screaming as reality itself unraveled around them.

In the center of destruction stood our family.

Lily, age twelve, granting wishes that shouldn't be granted. A woman wished to be young forever—Lily's magic locked her in a time loop, repeating the same day infinitely. A man wished he'd never made his biggest mistake—his entire timeline rewrote itself, erasing his children from existence.

Dante tried to stop her. "Lily, please, you're killing people!"

"They're getting what they wished for," Lily said, her eyes solid gold like mine had been in the bakery. "Isn't that what Cupids do? Give people their heart's desire?"

In the vision, I was painting frantically—trying to fix reality, undo damage, hold the world together. But my magic had grown too powerful. Every brushstroke reshaped existence. I tried to paint Rosewood Falls back to normal, but accidentally erased half the population instead.

"Stop!" Vision-Dante grabbed my hands. "Maya, you're making it worse!"

"I'm trying to save them!" I screamed.

"You're playing god!" He was crying. "This is exactly what the Council feared. We've become what Voss was—collectors of power we can't control."

The vision showed our family spiraling deeper into corruption, convinced we were helping, unable to see we'd become monsters.

"This is the corruption path," Cassia whispered. "The one where love becomes obsession. Where protecting your family means destroying everyone else. Where power grows until it consumes you completely."

I was pulled back to reality, gasping, tears streaming down my face.

"Three paths," Cassia said softly. "Emptiness, rebellion, or corruption. I've watched your futures for weeks, Maya. These are the only outcomes I see clearly."

"There has to be another way," I choked out.

"Perhaps. But I can't see it. The fourth path—the one where you keep your magic AND remain good—is clouded. Uncertain." She moved toward the dimensional tear. "That's why I came. To show you what's actually at stake when you plan this heist. You think you're stealing an artifact to fight the Severance Ritual. But what you're really doing is choosing which future destroys you."

"Then what should I do?" I grabbed her arm. "You see everything—just tell me what choice leads to happiness!"

"I see possibilities, not certainties. Free will means any path can change." Cassia's ancient eyes held something like pity. "But Maya? In 847 futures, you make the same mistake. You choose power because you think it's the only way to protect your family. And that choice—that single moment of deciding magic matters more than morality—is what starts the corruption."

She started to leave, then paused. "The heist is in seventy-two hours. During the theft, you'll face an impossible choice. I can't tell you what it is—speaking it makes it more likely to occur. But know this: the wrong choice doesn't feel wrong in the moment. It feels like love."

She vanished.

I sat alone in my studio, surrounded by sketches of the Council vault, my mind spinning with visions of hollow futures, fugitive futures, corrupted futures.

My phone buzzed. Text from Dante: "Found someone who knows the vault's layout. Can you come to the tattoo shop? This guy's information is... weird."

I grabbed my keys, trying to push Cassia's visions from my mind. We had seventy-two hours to plan an impossible heist. No time for existential terror about which future would destroy us.

When I arrived at Rossi Ink, Dante was in the back room with someone I'd never seen before. A thin man with nervous energy and eyes that didn't blink often enough.

"Maya, this is Felix," Dante said. "He used to work for the Council. He's willing to help us for a price."

"What price?" I asked, already suspicious.

Felix smiled, showing too many teeth. "I want you to steal two things from the vault. One for yourselves—whatever artifact Victoria promised would help you. And one for me." He pulled out a photograph of an ancient key covered in symbols. "This key opens a door that should stay closed. But I have... personal reasons for wanting it opened."

"What's behind the door?" I demanded.

"Does it matter?" Felix's smile widened. "You need my knowledge to pull off the heist. I need your family's unique magic to bypass the vault's defenses. We help each other, everyone wins."

Dante looked at me, silently asking: Do we trust him?

Through our soul bond, I felt his desperation. We were out of options. Out of time.

"Fine," I said. "We'll get your key."

Felix's expression shifted—just for a second—into something that made my blood run cold.

"Excellent," he said. "Then let me tell you about the vault. It exists in a pocket dimension. The only entrance is through a mirror that appears once per century at the exact moment when three moons align across three different worlds. That moment is in seventy-two hours."

He spread blueprints across Dante's desk. "The vault contains weapons that destroyed civilizations, artifacts that bend reality, and powers that were locked away because they corrupted everyone who touched them. You'll need to bypass twelve layers of security, each designed to kill intruders in creative ways. And you'll need to do it in under six minutes, because that's how long the alignment lasts."

"Six minutes to rob the most secure location in existence," I said flatly.

"Oh, that's not the hard part." Felix's too-wide smile returned. "The hard part is that the vault's final defense is a Guardian. An ancient being that shows you your worst fear made real. Most thieves never make it past the Guardian. They die screaming, trapped in nightmares of their own creation."

He looked at each of us. "So tell me—what's your worst fear? Because in seventy-two hours, you'll be facing it."