The Grand Ballroom of the Royal Palace was a spectacle of obscene opulence. Crystal chandeliers the size of small carriages hung from vaulted ceilings, their light reflecting off marble floors polished to a mirror sheen. Nobles draped in silks and jewels floated through the room, their laughter a delicate, artificial music against the backdrop of a string quartet. The air itself smelled of perfume, ambition, and lies.
And I, Leo, Master of Time, was in charge of the champagne fountain.
It was, of course, Seraphina's idea. "No one notices the servant pouring the drinks," she'd said. "They are part of the scenery. You'll be invisible, able to observe everyone."
She was right. Dressed in the stark white and gold livery of the palace staff, I was a ghost. I watched the intricate dance of politics unfold—the subtle insults masked as compliments, the alliances forged with a glance, the betrayals whispered behind fluttering fans.
My eyes scanned the crowd, looking for the telltale signs. I didn't need to feel for temporal fractures here; I was looking for a different kind of crack—the one in a person's mask.
I found him near the colossal ice sculpture of a phoenix. He was not wearing robes tonight, but the impeccably tailored black formalwear of a minor noble from a southern province. It was the Seeker. His posture was too still, his eyes—a flat, murky brown— cataloging the room not with social interest, but with analytical coldness. He was hunting.
Our plan was simple. At the peak of the evening, when the Headmaster was to give his speech, I would create the "distraction." A frozen moment, perfectly crafted. A single, stunning chandelier, its light and the fall of every diamond-like dewdrop within it, halted for ten full seconds. It would be breathtaking. Mysterious. And a blatant temporal anomaly that would scream for the Seeker's attention.
As I circulated with my tray of crystal flutes, I felt a different, more familiar presence. Kael. He had somehow wrangled an invitation, likely through his newly minted "hero" status. He was holding court, loudly recounting his fabricated battle with the Anomalies to a group of wide-eyed junior nobles. His date for the evening, to my slight surprise, was Elara. She stood beside him, wearing a simple but lovely green gown, a polite, fixed smile on her face that didn't reach her eyes. She looked like a songbird trapped in a cage of its own making.
I maneuvered through the crowd, arriving at their group just as Kael reached his story's climax.
"…and so I channeled the very bedrock of the earth, a pillar of stone that shattered the creature's core!" he boomed, sloshing his champagne for emphasis. The movement was just a little too broad. His elbow jarred against my tray.
In normal circumstances, the entire tower of fragile glasses would have tipped, drenching him and his audience in expensive bubbly wine. A perfect, humiliating disaster.
But these were not normal circumstances.
Time didn't stop. I didn't rewind. I simply… edited the event in real-time. As the tray tilted, I calculated the trajectory of every single glass, the flow of every droplet of liquid. I subtly altered the air resistance, minutely adjusted the momentum, and guided the entire cascade in a single, fluid arc that bypassed Kael, Elara, and the nobles, and splashed directly onto the immaculately polished shoes of the passing Crown Prince of a neighboring territory.
The world didn't freeze. The music didn't stop. But for Kael, time might as well have stood still. His jaw hung open. The nobles stared in horrified silence. The Crown Prince looked down at his soaked, ruined silk shoes with an expression of thunderous disbelief.
I bowed deeply, my face a mask of flawless servile apology. "A thousand pardons, Your Highness! A most unfortunate accident!"
The Prince's gaze swept from me, the "clumsy" servant, to Kael, who was still holding his glass in the incriminating position. The blame was transferred in an instant, wordlessly. Kael, the oafish, bragging provincial, had caused this international incident.
As the Prince's guards subtly but firmly ushered a sputtering Kael away, Elara was left standing alone. Her eyes met mine. The polite smile was gone, replaced by a look of dawning, profound understanding. She hadn't seen me do anything, but she knew. The sheer, impossible precision of the "accident" was a signature. She gave me a slow, almost imperceptible nod. It wasn't gratitude for saving her from embarrassment. It was an acknowledgment of the truth.
The incident, however, had drawn the wrong kind of attention. The Seeker's flat, analytical eyes were now on me. He had seen it too. Not the mechanics, but the result. The statistical impossibility. The fracture.
It was time to stop being subtle.
I gave a slight nod to Seraphina, who was watching from across the room. She subtly gestured to the Headmaster. The moment had come.
The Headmaster tapped his glass for attention. The room quieted. As he began his speech, I focused on the central chandelier. I didn't just stop it. I made it the centerpiece of a new reality. I froze the light within the crystals, making them burn with an intense, captured fire. I halted the gentle sway of the prismatic droplets, turning them into a constellation of solid diamond. For ten heartbeats, the magnificent structure hung in the ballroom, utterly motionless and silent, a defiance of physics that stole the breath from every person in the room.
Gasps echoed. The Seekers' eyes widened, not with wonder, but with triumphant confirmation. He was staring directly at the chandelier, a hungry smile playing on his lips. The bait had been taken.
As time restarted and the chandelier resumed its gentle sway, a collective sigh of awe swept the room. The distraction was a success.
But when I looked back to where the Seeker had been standing, he was gone.
A moment later, a palace guard—a man with cold, murky brown eyes—brushed past me as he cleared away an empty tray.
"The Glass Cathedral," he murmured, his voice a low whisper that only I could hear. "Midnight. Come alone. Or the girl, the Life-Weaver, will be the first shard we break."
He moved on, disappearing into the crowd.
I stood frozen, the empty tray in my hands feeling suddenly heavy. They hadn't taken the bait. They had used it. They knew about Elara. They knew she was a vulnerability.
The game had just changed. The Scorpion wasn't just hunting a weapon. It was threatening what little connection I had to this world.
I looked at the shimmering, oblivious crowd, the beautiful, frozen chandelier now moving again as if nothing had happened.
They wanted the master of time to come alone.
They were about to get their wish.