The years that followed were not marked by war or conquest, but by something far more important—mastery.
Time itself bent to my will now, but power without understanding is nothing more than a liability. I spent years refining my control, testing the limits of what the elemental power of Time would allow me to do without tearing reality apart. I learned quickly that Time is not like other elements. Fire burns. Ice freezes. Lightning strikes. Time responds. It watches. It remembers.
I learned to listen to it.
At first, I practiced subtle manipulations. Slowing the world around me while I moved freely through it. Creating pockets of distorted time where seconds stretched into minutes or collapsed into nothing at all. I learned how to step forward through time in short bursts—blinking from one moment to the next, skipping over events I deemed irrelevant. Useful, efficient, and most importantly, safe.
Rewinding time was… delicate. I could reverse small moments—spilled ink returning to its bottle, shattered stone reassembling itself, wounds knitting closed as if they had never existed. But every rewind left a faint pressure behind, like the universe taking note of my interference. I respected that warning.
Time travel, true time travel, was possible. I knew it. I could feel the path, the way forward and backward stretched endlessly before me. But I refused to walk it. Only fools tamper with causality without necessity. Time is not a tool to be abused—it is a contract. Break it too recklessly, and it will retaliate.
I am powerful, not stupid.
Alongside my mastery of Time, I turned my focus inward—toward martial power. Through a scroll I had stolen long ago, I mastered Spinjitzu. Unlike Wu and the others, I did not approach it through tradition or balance. I approached it as a system. Motion, energy, rhythm. Once I understood the flow, mastering it was inevitable.
Spinjitzu became an extension of my magic, not separate from it. When I spun, time responded—slowing, accelerating, bending subtly around me. My movements became impossible to predict, even to those with foresight. I was not just faster or stronger. I was out of sync with the battlefield itself.
Then came the dragon.
Fear had always been the final barrier to creating one. Fear of losing control. Fear of failure. Fear of judgment. But that fear had died with the First Spinjitzu Master. He had been the last shadow looming over my existence, the last force I truly respected as a threat.
With him gone, my mind was clear.
I shaped the dragon from pure elemental time, weaving magic and instinct together. Its body shimmered like fractured glass and flowing light, scales etched with glowing temporal runes. Its wings folded and unfolded like moments snapping into place. When it roared, the sound echoed twice—once in the present, once a heartbeat later.
The dragon obeyed me without hesitation.
Riding it was effortless. Time bent around us as we moved, the world blurring beneath its wings. I could slow the air itself, freeze falling ash mid-descent, or accelerate my flight beyond what physics should allow. The dragon was not just a construct—it was proof. Proof that I had surpassed the limitations that once defined elemental mastery.
I had no fear left in my heart.
Fear is a chain, and I had shattered mine.
From my fortress in the Lava Lands, I looked upon Ninjago with new eyes. Wu hid. Garmadon suffered and transformed. The golden weapons remained scattered. The world believed itself safe, balanced, untouched.
They were wrong.
I had mastered magic, time, Spinjitzu, and fear itself. I had armies that did not tire, knowledge stolen from legends, and power that no mortal was ever meant to wield alone.
And still—I waited.
Because true conquest is not about striking first. It is about striking inevitably.
Time was on my side.
Literally.