We Don't Want To Anger Morven

[Matías]

Matías stood unmoving, the air taut around him, as if the very walls of the compound held their breath. Across the table, Jay waited, all stone and steel, his body a clenched fist ready to strike.

And then… 


It came.

The vision opened behind Matías’s eyes like a storm tearing through a broken sky. Not one future, but a thousand, flooding him all at once—an endless tide of what could be.

He saw Jay rise without warning, the chair clattering to the floor as he lunged across the table. He felt the collision of fists, the sear of pain as bones broke under the force of anger too long restrained.


He saw Morven fall—her body folding like a dying flower, crimson blooming wildly across the floor.


He saw Samuel bursting through the door, powers drawn, his face a grim mask, dragging them all into a spiral of violence none could undo.


And then, he saw himself.


Driving Jay back, his hands slick with blood not his own, the life leaking out between his fingers. He saw the moment Jay’s heart faltered, and he knew the hollow victory of survival born of death.

But it did not end there. The visions twisted, morphed…


He saw Jay sit, heavy with silence, and the words between them stitching fragile bridges where once there was only ruin.


He glimpsed nights of shared burdens, long conversations and the slow, hard-earned trust of men who had seen too much and survived more.


He saw laughter, bright, sharp, startling in its purity, breaking over them like a river thawed after a hard winter.


Then, stranger still, hands reaching not in violence but in passionate need. A touch lingering longer than necessary. A gaze too steady to be mistaken.


Another life bloomed: one where Matías found himself tangled not with Jay’s body, but with Morven, her smile a rare and sacred thing in a world otherwise carved from stone.

Each future blazed through him, brilliant and fleeting, and in their wake they left him hollowed out and filled all at once.


This is a hinge, he thought, the words unspoken but absolute. The weight of it pressed against his chest, almost enough to bow him. Almost.


But Matías was not one who yielded to pressure. He drew a slow breath, gathering the fragments of what he had seen, and stood straighter for it.

When Jay spoke, gruff, unwilling but open enough, it was as if a knife meant for his heart had been lowered, if only slightly.

The worst paths wavered and dimmed, shrinking back into mist.

Matías moved forward with deliberate calm and took the chair opposite Jay. He sat without defensiveness, without fear—just a steady, anchored presence, the kind that had seen fire and ruin and had come through harder, sharper, but still whole.

He rested his arms on the table, and when he spoke, his voice was a low rumble, steady as the earth beneath them.

“I know what my uncle and father did to you,” Matías said, the weight of the admission settling between them like a loaded gun. His dark gaze never wavered. “I know the blood they spilled. The lives they shattered. Yours among them.”

He paused, not for effect, but because the truth deserved space to breathe.

“I do not expect you to forget. Nor would I insult you by asking it. Some wounds should never close without leaving scars to remember them.”

He leaned in slightly, the air between them thick with the gravity of what he was about to say.

“But I ask for your forgiveness.” His voice did not tremble. It rang with the quiet strength of a man who understood the cost of the words he spoke. “Not because I believe it will wash away the past. Nothing can do that. I ask because I am here to change the future.”

His shoulders straightened, his presence filling the office with something heavy, something immovable.

“I am not here to play at penance. I am not here to hide behind bloodlines, and I offer what I am. Strength, loyalty, and my word, to the Ascendancy.”

A flicker of something almost like pride touched his features as he went on.

“Damien Oakland brought peace to a land ruled by blood and fire. Where once my family spread rot, he sowed order. Stability. Hope. I believe he will do the same for the world, if given the chance to rise as Patron. And I would see that vision carried forward. I would stand against the darkness—not as my father’s son, but as a man who chooses a different path.”