The whispers chased Kael through the streets like hungry dogs.  

*Freak. Aberration. Void-spawn.*  

He ignored them, his boots crunching over gravel as he cut through the alleys of Blackforge. The Church’s enforcers would come soon—he’d seen their steel-tipped staves glinting in the crowd after the Awakening. But time was a currency now, and he intended to spend it ruthlessly.  

*First, Rylan.*  

The scholar’s ramshackle hut leaned against the city’s outer wall, its roof patched with rusted Eclipse Beast scales. Kael paused, memories flickering: Rylan hunched over star charts, muttering about temporal harmonics. The man who’d later calculate the exact angle to slide a blade between his ribs.  

He kicked the door open.  

Rylan yelped, scrambling back from a cluttered desk. Books on chronomancy lay scattered, their pages scribbled with equations Kael had once found incomprehensible. Now, they read like nursery rhymes.  

*“Y-you!”* The boy adjusted his spectacles, terror and awe warring on his face. *“The Void Core… the priest said you’d be executed by—”*  

*“Quiet.”* Kael tossed a leather-bound journal onto the desk. Rylan’s own handwriting stared back—*future* Rylan’s, pilfered from a corpse in another life. *“You want to understand time? Start here.”*  

Rylan’s fingers trembled as he flipped through pages detailing paradoxes even the Church feared. *“This… this is impossible. These theories… how did you—?”*  

*“You wrote them.”* Kael leaned in, shadows pooling at his feet. *“Or you will. Unless you die here, today.”*  

The boy’s throat bobbed. *“What do you want?”*  

*“Loyalty.”* The word tasted like ash. *“The Church will come for me. You’ll tell them my Core is unstable. A temporary flare.”*  

*“They’ll never believe—”*  

Kael’s hand shot out, gripping Rylan’s wrist. Time shivered, and the scholar’s skin withered where they touched—papery, ancient. Rylan screamed.  

*“They’ll believe what you make them believe,”* Kael said, releasing him. The boy’s hand snapped back to youth, leaving only a single gray hair as proof. *“Or next time, I take decades.”*  

---

The market square stank of burnt sugar and fear.  

Kael moved past stalls, his hood drawn low. Seraphina’s family bakery stood ahead, its chimney spewing smoke. Through the window, he saw her—fifteen, flour dusting her cheeks, laughing as she braided dough into sun-shaped loaves.  

*Last time, she’d aimed her first arrow to save me from a Beast. Now…*  

A hand gripped his shoulder.  

*“Void-blessed shouldn’t linger,”* growled a voice. Three enforcers flanked him, their staves crackling with Solar energy. *“Come quietly, or we’ll scorch the taint from your bones.”*  

Kael smiled.  

Time slowed.  

The lead enforcer’s snarl stretched into a silent gape as Kael sidestepped, fingers brushing the man’s armored chest.  

*Decay.*  

The enforcer’s scream pierced the frozen air as his breastplate rusted through, flesh beneath rotting to pus. The others unfroze, stumbling back, but Kael was already moving.  

He shattered the second enforcer’s knee with a time-accelerated kick, bone splintering like glass. The third fled, but not before Kael palmed his face, aging his eyes to milky blindness.  

The square erupted into chaos. Seraphina’s laughter died as she stared through the bakery window, her golden eyes wide.  

*Too strong. Too unpredictable.*  

He turned away, but not fast enough to miss the spark of fear in her gaze.  

*Good. Fear is leverage.*  

---

The black feather waited on his bed.  

Kael picked it up, its edges shimmering with unnatural iridescence. Beneath it, scrawled in ash:  

*THE ECLIPSE REMEMBERS.*  

He crushed the feather, but the words lingered, seared into his vision.  

*Knock. Knock.*  

Liora stood in the doorway, her robe too large, her hair a tangled nest. The girl who’d become a blade. The sister who’d become a wound.  

*“They say you’re cursed,”* she whispered. *“But you saved me once. In the ruins.”*  

A lie. That rescue happened years from now. Unless…  

*She’s already theirs.*  

Kael crouched, gripping her chin. *“Who sent you?”*  

Tears welled in her eyes. *“No one! I just… I have nightmares. Beasts with too many teeth. And you’re always there, dying.”*  

His grip tightened. *“What else?”*  

*“A lady in black. She says you’ll break the world.”* Liora trembled. *“Are you going to, Kael?”*  

He released her, cold settling in his chest. *“Run home, little prophet.”*  

As she fled, he spotted the mark beneath her collar—a sun eclipsed by a serpent. The Church’s sigil.  

*So it begins.*  

---

**TO BE CONTINUED...**