Once Acronix and Krux were secured, the real work began.
Prisoners are useful. Subjects are invaluable.
Deep within my domain, far from prying eyes and layered beneath wards designed to suppress even conceptual forces, I began my research. Not interrogation—there was no need for words. Their very existence was the key. I observed their bodies, their energy patterns, the way time itself bent subtly around them even while restrained.
Elemental power is not magic.
That was my first conclusion.
Magic flows. It can be shaped, redirected, stolen, refined. Elemental power, however, anchors itself. It fuses with the bearer, intertwining with body and soul until separation becomes nearly impossible. Nearly.
Through weeks of analysis, testing, and careful divination, I reached another realization—one that carried both limitation and warning.
A mortal body can only hold one elemental power.
That is the absolute threshold. Any more, and the vessel destabilizes—energy conflict, cellular collapse, temporal fracture. Death would be the kind outcome.
Even for me.
I am a wizard, yes, but I am still bound by structure. With preparation, enchantment, and reinforcement, I might survive holding two elemental powers at once—but only briefly, and at great cost. That knowledge made my next decision clear.
If I was to claim one power… it would be Time.
Time is not merely an element. It governs all others. Fire burns in time. Ice freezes through time. Creation and destruction are measured by it. To command time is not just to fight—it is to decide when a fight ever happened at all.
I had attempted something similar once before.
In another world, under another name—Monstrox—I had created a spell capable of draining magic from other wizards. The theory was sound: identify the energetic signature, sever the bond, and redirect the flow into myself.
If elemental power behaved like magic, the spell would work.
It didn't.
The spell activated, the runes held, the conduit formed… and then the elemental energy simply refused to move. It resisted like reality itself was pushing back.
So I adapted.
Magic evolves. And so do I.
For an entire month, I rewrote the spell from its foundation. I abandoned traditional siphoning theory and instead focused on replacement. Not removing the elemental power—but convincing reality that it had already chosen a new host.
It was delicate. Dangerous. One miscalculation and I would erase myself from causality entirely.
When the final sigil locked into place, I knew I would only get one attempt.
No retries.
No corrections.
I activated the spell.
Time screamed.
Not audibly—but conceptually. The chamber warped as seconds stretched and folded. Acronix and Krux convulsed as the elemental bond anchoring them to time unraveled, their power torn free not by force, but by inevitability.
And then—
Silence.
The energy surged into me.
I felt it settle, not violently, but precisely. As if time itself had acknowledged the transfer and accepted it as valid. My heartbeat slowed. Then stopped. Then resumed—on my terms.
I could feel it all.
The flow of seconds.
The tension of paused moments.
The elasticity of causality.
I could stop time.
Rewind it.
Pause it between heartbeats.
Accelerate it forward, watching futures collapse into the present.
I released the spell and stepped back, breathing carefully—not because I needed to, but because habits matter when reality bends around you.
Acronix and Krux were left hollow. Alive, but disconnected. Men who once ruled centuries reduced to prisoners of the present.
I did not linger.
Power like this demands discipline.
I withdrew to isolation and began mastery immediately—freezing single objects mid-fall, rewinding shattered stone, observing timelines branch and collapse with the smallest changes. Every experiment taught me restraint as much as control.
Time does not forgive recklessness.
But it does reward precision.
And I intended to become its master.