I was not supposed to survive that day. None of us were.

The regiment had been sent to hold a position we could not hold against an enemy we could not defeat. The Ash Regiment—thirty men, most of them convicts and deserters pressed into service, armed with rifles that barely worked and ammunition that barely lasted. Our job was to delay the advancing force long enough for the main army to regroup. In practical terms, our job was to die slowly and messily.

Captain Rawlinson knew this. I knew this. The men knew this. But nobody said it out loud. We stood in the dust, we checked our rifles, we shared cigarettes, and we waited for the enemy to arrive.

Ed Rawlinson stood at the front of the line, his rifle slung over his shoulder, his hat pulled low over his eyes. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, with the kind of face that people remembered—a square jaw, steady blue eyes, a mouth that seemed permanently set in a half-smile that wasn't really a smile. He looked like every officer you had ever seen in a painting. But what made him different was something you couldn't see: the way he moved through a crowd like a man who could feel the shape of the air around him.

I first noticed it during the first engagement. We were ambushed in a narrow valley, and the enemy had the high ground. By all logic, we should have been slaughtered. But Ed—Ed moved before the first shot was fired. He ordered half the men left while the other half went right. He positioned the artillery on a ridge we hadn't noticed. He sent a runner ahead of the battle to tell the cavalry where the enemy would be.

They were right. Every single prediction.

After the battle, a sergeant came up to me and said, "Calloway, your captain's got a gift."

I didn't believe him. Not at first. But I started watching Ed. Really watching him. And I noticed something: before every major decision, his hand would go to his temple, and his face would tighten, like he was in pain. And then—he would move. Not think. Move. Like his body knew something his mind hadn't processed yet.

Finch, our doctor, told me the truth six months later. Ed had a neurological condition—a type of migraine with aura. But his auras were different. They weren't visual disturbances. They were... predictions. Brief flash-images of events that were about to happen, triggered by the electrical storm in his brain. Ed saw three, maybe four seconds into the future. It wasn't much. But in a battle, three seconds was an eternity.

"It's destroying him," Finch said quietly. "Every episode is an electrical storm in his cortex. With each one, he's burning neural tissue. He might not have years left."

"Can you treat it?"

Finch shook his head. "I can delay it. I can give him painkillers and sedatives that dull the symptoms. But the damage is permanent. Every time he sees the future, he loses a little bit of the present."

I sat with that for a long time. Then I went to Ed's tent and found him lying on his cot, one hand pressed to his temple, his face pale.

"You know," I said.

He didn't look surprised. "About the auras?"

"Yes."

He smiled that half-smile. "You're a good observer, Calloway. That's why I kept you around. Most of the men can't read."

"I can read," I said. "I went to Oxford."

"I know," he said. "I read your letters. You write beautiful letters."

I didn't know what to say to that. So I sat down on a crate across from his cot and we sat in silence while the regiment prepared for the next battle.

Three weeks later, the General arrived. Sir Henry Ashworth, a man whose uniform was too bright and whose ego was too large for the room he occupied. He inspected the Ash Regiment, looked at the dirt and the mud and the exhausted men, and he did not look happy.

"This is your best?" he said to Ed. "These are the soldiers you're sending into battle?"

"They're my best," Ed said.

Ashworth's mouth tightened. "You know, Rawlinson, there are rumors about you. About your methods. About how you win battles. People are saying your victories are... unorthodox."

"I fight with what I have," Ed said.

Ashworth stared at him for a long moment. Then he said, quietly enough that only I could hear: "Be careful, Captain. Unorthodox victories attract unorthodox attention."

I didn't understand what he meant until two weeks later, when Ed was arrested on charges of receiving unauthorized aid from enemy forces.

The evidence was absurd. A letter—forged, I was sure, though I couldn't prove it—purportedly from Ed to the enemy commander, offering to reveal British troop positions in exchange for a sum of money. The letter was addressed in a hand that was almost Ed's but not quite. The content was plausible enough that a court-martial would convict on it.

Ed refused to defend himself.

"When I stand before a tribunal and explain that I can see three seconds into the future," he said to me in the moments before they took him away, "they'll lock me in an asylum. Or they'll execute me for witchcraft. Neither outcome helps the regiment."

"Ed—" I started.

"Don't," he said. He put a hand on my shoulder. "You're the writer, Callay. You're the one who remembers. Remember us. Remember what we did. Remember that we were here."

They took him away in the afternoon. Finch and I sat by a fire that night and drank whiskey that tasted like turpentine.

"He'll be court-martialed in the morning," Finch said.

"He'll be convicted," I said.

"Probably. Then what?"

I looked at the stars. They were bright in India, brighter than anywhere I had ever seen. "Then I find out what Ed knew that he never told me."

I began with the regiment's records. Ed had been an officer for six years. Six years of battles, campaigns, strategies. And in every single one, there was a pattern: before a major engagement, Ed's health had always deteriorated. Migraines. Fainting spells. Periods of unconsciousness. The official records called it "neurasthenia." Finch called it something else.

I called it the price.

In the regiment's dusty archive room, behind a shelf of rotting supply manifests, I found it: a letter, addressed to someone named "Monsieur Lefebvre" and written in French. The handwriting was Ed's. The date was 1723.

But that was impossible. Ed Rawlinson was born in 1828.

Unless the letter was not from Ed.

Unless it was about Ed.

Unless there was something—someone—that had been passing through our bloodline for longer than any of us knew.

I held the letter in my hands and felt the world tilt. The Ash Regiment had been sent to die. Ed had been sent to die. And I was the only one who would remember any of it.

That had to be enough.

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