The forge sang its final song as twilight clung to the bones of Vaelun.
Ash fell like snow. Not from the sky, but from the towering corpse of the ancient tree that once held the village together. The roots had long since blackened, and the branches curled like fingers reaching for something that no longer answered. The villagers called it The Duskroot, though no one remembered when it had died — only that the sun dimmed the day it did.
Inside the forge, Kael Vire struck steel with purpose.
He had no magic, no heritage, no destiny. Just his hammer, his sweat, and the quiet fury that lived in his hands. Sparks burst like stars as he beat the glowing metal, shaping it with more desperation than artistry. The blade had to be finished by nightfall.
Nightfall was when the shadows blinked.
His master, old Garron, watched from the doorway. The firelight danced across the wrinkles carved into the man's face — not by age, but by memory. "You've got the shape wrong," Garron grunted.
"I know," Kael replied, without stopping.
"You're folding it too fast. The steel's screaming."
Kael raised his eyes. "So am I."
Garron said nothing. The silence between them had always been thick, but this time it rippled — like time itself held its breath.
Outside, the bell tower rang… backward.
Kael froze. The hammer slipped. The steel hissed as it hit the coals, unfinished.
"Did you hear that?" he asked.
Garron didn't move. His eyes widened.
"No," the old man whispered. "That… that's not supposed to happen."
Then came the tremor. A heartbeat through the bones of the earth. The walls shook. Lanterns swayed. From beyond the hills, a blue light cracked the clouds — jagged and wrong. It wasn't lightning. It was something older.
Kael grabbed the half-forged blade. "It's the Time Legion," he said before he even knew the words. They had come to him like instinct — or memory.
Garron's voice trembled. "How do you know that name?"
Before Kael could answer, the forge door exploded inward.
And standing in the smoke was a girl — hair like raven-feathers, eyes burning with shifting stars. In one hand, she held a dying pocketwatch. In the other, a scroll sealed in blood.
She looked at Kael as if she'd known him for lifetimes.
"You're not ready," she said. "But the clock is broken. And you're the only one left."
Kael raised his hammer. "Who are you?"
"I'm Ashra. I came from the future you failed to save."
And outside, the sky cracked open.
The smoke coiled like a living thing, curling around Ashra's boots as she stepped into the forge. Her presence bent the room — not physically, but in a way Kael couldn't explain. The shadows curved toward her. The air pulsed, like the forge itself remembered her.
Kael tightened his grip on the hammer.
Ashra tilted her head. "That won't help you."
"I wasn't planning on asking nicely," Kael said.
Garron raised a hand between them. "Both of you—enough. Girl, you said you're from the future?"
Ashra nodded, slow and solemn. "A thread that burned too fast. A time that no longer breathes."
Kael frowned. "You're speaking in riddles."
"No. I'm speaking in fragments," Ashra corrected. "Because time is breaking, and soon language will follow."
Garron muttered something in Old Vaeluni under his breath and sat heavily on the anvil. "This is worse than I thought."
Ashra moved closer. She pulled out the blood-sealed scroll and offered it to Kael. "This is yours. You wrote it. Not now, but in another thread. Before it was erased."
Kael stared at it. His name was carved into the wax seal. K.V.
He didn't remember writing it.
Because he hadn't.
Because that version of him never lived long enough to deliver it.
He took it with slow fingers. His hands shook. The scroll felt… heavy. Like it carried the weight of an entire century.
Ashra turned toward the forge's window, where the sky still flickered with blue rifts. "The Time Legion has already crossed into this timeline. They're hunting for the Everspire Fragments."
"I don't know what any of that means," Kael muttered.
"You will," she said. "You have three days before this village becomes ash. Three days to find the shard. If you don't, time here collapses — and you with it."
Garron stood. "You brought war to our door."
"I brought warning," Ashra snapped. "The war was already here. Buried. Forgotten. Waiting."
Kael looked at the dying pocketwatch in her hand. The glass was cracked. The hands spun in opposite directions.
"What happens if I don't believe you?" he asked.
Ashra's voice turned to ice. "Then this timeline ends. And I'll have to find you again. Somewhere else. Again and again… until one version of you finally listens."
She turned and walked into the night without another word.
Kael watched her go. Then he looked down at the scroll in his hands.
And slowly, he broke the seal.
The wax cracked like brittle bone.
Kael unraveled the scroll with steady fingers, though his heart thundered in his chest. The parchment was old — impossibly so — yet untouched by decay. As if time itself refused to touch it.
The first line was written in a hand he instantly recognized.
His own.
To myself,
If you're reading this, it means the fracture has begun. The Everspire is gone. Vaelun is next. You won't remember writing this, because this version of you never did.
But I need you to trust it anyway.
Kael swallowed hard.
The Time Legion will arrive under starlight. Their general wears no face, but he'll speak your name like he owns it. Don't listen. Don't hesitate. Forge the blade. The one made of fallen flame.
Find the girl. You already have, haven't you? She'll lie to protect you. She'll kill to protect the timeline. She's dangerous—but she's also your anchor.
And whatever happens, Kael—never go near the Tower at Hollowreach.
That's where I died.
The final words were underlined in smudged ink:
Time is not your ally.
But it remembers you.
Kael let the scroll fall.
The forge was silent. The coals had dimmed, as though even fire held its breath.
Garron stepped forward slowly. "What did it say?"
Kael didn't answer.
Outside, wind howled through the dead Duskroot branches. But beneath it… another sound. A thrum. Mechanical. Measured. Like a thousand clock gears turning all at once.
They had come.
The Time Legion.
Ashra burst through the door. Her eyes were wild. Her cloak torn. "They're here."
Garron cursed. "We need to leave—"
"No," Kael interrupted. "We need to finish the blade."
Ashra stared at him, surprised. "You read it."
"I did."
She nodded, slowly. "Then maybe this time… we'll last long enough to matter."
Outside, the first of the Time Legion stepped into the village. Wrapped in silver armor, faces hidden behind glass masks, they moved like they weren't made of flesh at all.
One of them paused — and turned its head toward the forge.
Its voice, when it spoke, echoed directly into Kael's skull.
"Kael Vire. You are Out of Sequence."
The words drilled into Kael's mind like iron through ice.
Out of Sequence.
Ashra's face went pale. "They've identified you already? That fast?"
Garron backed away from the window, muttering old war-tongue curses. "If the Legion's calling him that, we don't have time to hide. They're going to unravel him."
Kael didn't blink. He stepped forward instead.
The Time Legion officer stood at the edge of the forge yard, unmoving. Behind it, more figures emerged from the mist — twelve in all. Armored. Silent. Impossible. Their glass masks reflected flickering blue light from the tears in the sky.
Ashra grabbed Kael's wrist. "We run. We're not ready."
"No," Kael said. "We forge."
He turned to Garron. "Get the Ember Core. Now."
The old man's eyes widened. "Kael, that core hasn't burned in twenty years. It'll kill us before it—"
"We don't need to live long," Kael said. "Just long enough."
Garron stared at him for a beat, then moved. The hidden hatch beneath the anvil groaned as he pulled it open, revealing a small crystalline shard — glowing faint red.
Kael dropped the unfinished blade back into the forge and slammed the Ember Core into its socket. The forge roared to life, screaming with heat and old fire. Sparks burst like comets. The blade hissed violently.
Ashra's voice trembled. "This version of you… you're not like the others."
"I don't have time to be."
Outside, the first Legion officer raised a hand.
It didn't draw a weapon.
It simply twisted two fingers clockwise in the air.
And the world—slowed.
Wind froze. Leaves hung in place. Garron's voice faded into a warbled echo. Even the flames bent unnaturally, as if trapped in thick syrup. Only Kael and Ashra remained moving.
"Chrono-loop field," Ashra whispered. "They've locked time around the village. We're in a sealed second."
Kael didn't stop hammering. Each strike was heavier, angrier. The blade began to glow white-hot, but it wasn't heat—it was memory.
The metal was remembering something it hadn't become yet.
A sword of fallen flame.
Ashra reached for her side and drew a blade of her own — one shaped like a crescent eclipse. "I'll hold the door. When the loop collapses, they'll all move at once."
Kael didn't look at her. "I only need seven more strikes."
She stepped outside the forge as the Legion began to converge.
And behind her, the sky split open again, revealing something monstrous — not a creature, not a ship, but a scar.
A tear in time.
Ashra whispered to it: "Not yet. Not this timeline. He's different this time."
Back inside, Kael struck the sixth blow.
And then the seventh.
The blade screamed awake.
And the forge exploded in light.