Kael woke to someone pounding on his door. The sky outside was still dark, though not the full black of night more the gray-blue of pre-dawn. He'd slept maybe three hours, his dreams full of fractured time and voices that spoke in broken seconds.
"Up! Now!" Saphira's voice was sharp through the door. "Training grounds in ten minutes. If you're late, you forfeit breakfast."
Kael dressed quickly in the training clothes he found laid out dark, flexible material that seemed to adjust to his body temperature. Another luxury that would have been unimaginable yesterday. He splashed water on his face, noting how the Mirror above the basin showed his reflection with a slight delay, as if the image was traveling through time to reach the glass. Was that new, or had he simply never noticed before?
The Mark on his palm had faded from crimson to a dark burgundy, still pulsing faintly with his heartbeat. He covered it with a glove from the clothing pile and headed out.
The training grounds were an impossible space from outside, the building had looked modest, but the interior stretched for what seemed like miles. Multiple environments coexisted in clearly defined zones: a section of frozen tundra, a patch of desert with real heat shimmers, a flooded area where students would apparently learn to fight while swimming. The ceiling showed the actual sky, but accelerated Kael watched dawn approach in fast-forward, the sun rising in seconds rather than minutes.
The fourteen survivors from last night's ceremony stood in an uneven line. Calista gave him a tired nod. Most of the others looked like Kael felt exhausted and overwhelmed. Only the tattooed boy from last night seemed energetic, practically bouncing on his toes with barely contained excitement.
"Welcome to your first lesson," Saphira said, appearing from nowhere with that unsettling way Conduits seemed to have. "Most of you probably think you're going to learn combat forms today. Advanced Fragment manipulation. Maybe some tactical training."
She smiled without warmth.
"You're wrong. Today, you learn the most important lesson a Conduit can learn: how to suppress your power."
Confused murmurs rippled through the group.
"Being a Conduit isn't about constantly channeling Fragment energy," Saphira continued. "It's about control. Discipline. Knowing when NOT to use your abilities. Because Fragment energy is finite both in the world and in your body. Burn through it too quickly, and you'll either die or turn into an Echo yourself."
She gestured, and a figure emerged from the tundra section humanoid, but wrong. Its proportions shifted moment to moment, and where its face should have been was only a swirling vortex of colors. Several students gasped.
"This was a Conduit once," Saphira said quietly. "Someone who couldn't control their draw on the Fragments. The energy consumed their humanity, leaving only this. It doesn't remember its name. It doesn't remember being human. It only knows hunger for more Fragment energy."
The creature turned its non-face toward the group, and Kael felt a pull the Mark on his palm grew warm, responding to something in the creature. He clenched his fist, trying to suppress the sensation.
"Your first exercise," Saphira announced, "is simple. Stand completely still for one hour while feeling the Fragment energy all around you. Don't channel it. Don't use your Marks. Just... resist."
"That's it?" the tattooed boy Damian, Kael had learned his name scoffed. "Stand still?"
"Yes. If you can manage it."
It sounded absurdly easy. It wasn't.
Within five minutes, Kael understood the challenge. The Fragment energy wasn't passive it called to him, whispering promises of power. His Mark itched, burned, begged to be used. Around him, other students were struggling. One girl's hands kept sparking with electricity. Damian's shadow was moving independently of his body.
Calista, standing two places to Kael's left, was sweating bullets. Her golden Mark had begun to glow, and the air around her was shimmering with heat.
"Don't fight it directly," Saphira instructed, walking among them. "That only makes it worse. Accept that the energy is there, acknowledge the urge to use it, but choose not to. Every time you successfully resist is a victory."
Kael tried her advice. Instead of mentally pushing against the energy, he visualized himself as a stone in a river the current flowed around him, but he remained unmoved. The itching in his Mark lessened slightly.
Then time hiccupped.
For just an instant, everyone around him froze Saphira mid-step, Calista mid-breath, the transformed Echo mid-sway. Kael felt the temporal energy rush through him, exhilarating and terrifying, and then it snapped back. Everyone resumed motion, none of them seeming to notice the skip.
Except Saphira. Her eyes found Kael immediately, narrowed in concern.
The rest of the hour was agony. Twice more, time stuttered around Kael, each instance lasting a fraction of a second. No one else seemed to notice, but each time, his Mark pulsed darker, and he felt something draining from him not energy exactly, but something more fundamental. Maybe this was the debt the Fragments had warned him about.
When Saphira finally called time, six of the fourteen had failed. One boy had unconsciously created a small tornado around himself. Another girl had phased partially through the floor and gotten stuck. Damian had given up entirely and was juggling balls of shadow, grinning like this was all a game.
"Those who failed, extra drills after dinner," Saphira announced. "Those who succeeded, congratulations. You've proven you have the minimal self-control required to not accidentally kill yourselves in the next week."
She dismissed the others but gestured for Kael to stay.
"Your Mark is darker," she said once they were alone. "And I felt the temporal distortions. Three of them. You were using your power."
"I wasn't trying to—"
"Intent doesn't matter. The debt doesn't care if you meant to borrow time or not." Saphira's expression was grave. "I researched last night. Time manipulation is one of the rarest Fragment abilities, and one of the most dangerous. Not to others to you. Every time you alter time's flow, you accumulate debt. Small uses, small debts. But they compound."
"What happens when the debt gets too large?"
"No one knows. The last recorded time manipulator died three hundred years ago, during the Shattering. But the archives mention something called the Temporal Hollow a state where the Conduit exists outside normal time flow. They described it as 'worse than death.'"
A chill ran down Kael's spine. "So what am I supposed to do? Never use my power?"
"You learn control. Perfect control. Which means from now on, you train separately from the others. Your power is too dangerous to develop alongside theirs." She started walking toward the far end of the training grounds. "Come. I'm taking you to someone who might actually be able to help."
They walked for what felt like miles through the impossible space, passing through zones Kael hadn't noticed before—a section where gravity pointed sideways, a chamber filled with living crystals, an area that seemed to exist in perpetual sunset.
Finally, they reached a door that appeared to be made of frozen time itself Kael could see moments captured in its surface, images of past events playing in reverse and forward simultaneously.
Saphira knocked three times.
"Enter," came a voice from within ancient and layered, as if multiple people were speaking at once.
The room beyond was small, circular, and filled with clocks. Hundreds of them, all showing different times, none of them moving. In the center sat a figure in a wheelchair an elderly woman whose skin had the same translucent quality as Master Aldric, but more pronounced. She looked like she was barely anchored to reality.
"Saphira," the woman said, her multiple-voice speaking in perfect unison. "You've brought me a time thief. How nostalgic."
"Lady Aveline, this is Kael. He was Marked yesterday and manifested temporal abilities. The bond warned him about time debt."
"Did it now?" Aveline's eyes which seemed to be looking at multiple points simultaneously focused on Kael. "Come closer, boy. Let me see your Mark."
Kael approached slowly, extending his gloved hand. Aveline pulled off the glove and studied the burgundy spiral on his palm.
"Fascinating," she murmured. "The Mark of the Borrower. I had one like this myself, once. Before I learned the cost of power without wisdom." She gestured to herself her translucent state, her wheelchair, her disconnection from normal time. "This is what happens when you accumulate too much debt, child. I exist in all moments simultaneously now. I experience every second of my life at once birth, death, and everything between. It's enlightening and maddening in equal measure."
"Can you teach him control?" Saphira asked.
"I can teach him something better I can teach him to pay his debts." Aveline released Kael's hand. "Every time he borrows from time's flow, he can balance the equation through meditation and sacrifice. It won't prevent debt entirely, but it can slow the accumulation. And I can teach him the one technique that might save his life: the Temporal Anchor."
"What's that?" Kael asked.
"A moment you freeze inside yourself. A perfect memory preserved outside time's flow. When the debt becomes too great, when you feel yourself slipping from reality's grasp, you can return to that anchor. It won't erase the debt, but it will remind you who you are. It will keep you human."
She turned her wheelchair toward one of the frozen clocks.
"But first, you must choose your anchor carefully. It must be a moment of absolute clarity a time when you knew exactly who you were and why you existed. Think carefully, Kael. You only get one chance at this. Choose wrong, and your anchor will fail when you need it most."
Kael closed his eyes, thinking through his life. So many moments of pain, of struggle, of grinding poverty. But Aveline had said clarity, not happiness.
Then he had it the memory rose up with perfect precision. He was ten years old, sitting beside his mother's bed in their tiny room. She was dying, they both knew it, and there was nothing they could do. She'd taken his hand and said: "Promise me you'll survive, Kael. No matter what life takes from you, promise me you'll wake up tomorrow."
And he'd promised. In that moment, with death in the room and nothing in their pockets, he'd understood exactly who he was: a survivor. Someone who refused to quit, even when quitting would be easier.
"I have it," he said to Aveline.
"Then we begin your training. Saphira, you may go. This will take time."
As Saphira left, Aveline gestured for Kael to sit.
"Now then, time thief, let me tell you the secret truth about our power: Time doesn't flow in one direction. It's a circle, and we who manipulate it are both its masters and slaves. Learn to respect that paradox, and you might survive long enough to regret your gift."
She smiled a expression that existed across multiple versions of her face simultaneously.
"Let us begin."