The wind carried whispers again. Not voices exactly, but faint distortions in the Flow — as if someone had plucked the strings of time too hard.
Eryndor walked toward the sound.
The dunes shimmered under a dim violet sky, each grain of dust glowing faintly where broken minutes drifted through the air. His steps left ripples behind him; the ground didn't remember how to stay still anymore.
He adjusted the black cloth around his wrist, hiding the infinity mark that pulsed beneath. It had been glowing since dawn, steady and urgent, like a heartbeat calling him forward.
---
By midday, the landscape began to change. The color of the dust shifted from pale gold to rust-red — a hue he had never seen before.
Every few paces, time itself seemed to flicker: a bird frozen mid-flight, a distant echo of thunder repeating itself, a shadow moving against the wind.
He stopped at a ridge, kneeling beside a half-buried road sign. The letters were worn away, but the metal still hummed.
Eryndor pressed a palm against it.
Warm.
Alive.
"Someone's touched this," he whispered.
The Flow around the sign was warped, bent outward like a ripple in water. Whoever caused it wasn't just surviving out here — they were shaping time.
---
He followed the distortion trail until the sun sagged low.
At the bottom of a dry ravine lay what once might've been a village. Wooden frames, shattered clocks, faded banners fluttering in loops of broken seconds. The air smelled faintly of iron and ozone — signs of a Time Burst.
He crouched, touching the ground. A pulse jumped through his fingers.
The mark beneath his cloth flared, reacting to it.
He saw flashes:
a red light,
a hand reaching through smoke,
a face half hidden.
The vision vanished as quickly as it came, leaving his heart racing.
---
He rose, scanning the ruins.
All around him, clocks lay scattered. Some ticked forward, others backward. A few spun so fast their hands blurred into circles of light.
And in the center of it all stood a single object — an hourglass, half-buried, glowing faintly crimson.
He walked toward it slowly.
The sand inside wasn't sand at all — it was liquid light, flowing upward instead of down.
Eryndor reached out. The instant his skin brushed the glass, time bent sideways.
For one breathless moment, he was everywhere at once — past, present, and something that hadn't happened yet.
He saw a city still alive, children laughing under blue banners, and a girl standing among them, her wrist shining red.
Then everything snapped back.
He stumbled, gasping. The hourglass cracked, leaking red light that bled into the dust like ink.
---
He sat there for a long time, staring at the broken relic.
He'd never felt anything like that energy.
It wasn't the Order's blue, nor the golden current that marked his own anomaly.
This was older. Wilder.
And underneath the glow, faint traces of words etched into the glass read:
> To stop time is to steal a soul.
Eryndor whispered the line aloud. It sounded like a warning—and a confession.
---
Night fell quietly.
He lit a chrono-ore flame and watched it flicker beside the red stain spreading across the sand.
Whoever had done this had power that rivaled his own.
But unlike him, they weren't hiding.
They'd left this behind deliberately — a signal, maybe, or a challenge.
He glanced at the horizon. Far off, lightning forked across the sky — red lightning, rare and unnatural.
"The Flow's changing again," he murmured.
He didn't know whether to be afraid or relieved.
For four years he had been the only fracture in this world.
Now, someone else was bending the rules.
---
He spent the rest of the night mapping the distortion patterns.
Each flicker of red energy followed a rhythm — like a heartbeat, distant but constant.
It pulsed every sixty seconds.
Someone alive was generating it.
Eryndor stood, tightening the strap on his pack. The desert wind blew harder, scattering glowing grains across his boots.
He stared once more at the broken hourglass, then whispered, "Who are you?"
No answer came, but the Flow stirred—softly, almost affectionately.
He turned toward the storm.
Each step forward felt heavier, time dragging at his heels.
When the lightning flashed again, he thought he saw a silhouette at the far edge of the horizon — a small figure standing against the wind, cloak whipping in red light.
But when he blinked, the vision was gone.
---
By dawn, the red hue had faded from the desert.
Only ash-gray sand remained, quiet and cold.
Eryndor looked down at his wrist. The infinity mark pulsed once more and then stilled, as if satisfied.
He had no idea that miles away, a girl with a scarlet ChronoMark was waking from the same dream — a dream of a boy with gray eyes and an endless clock.
To be continued...