Lys dreamed in fractures.
Moments overlapped—past wounds bleeding into future echoes, battles that hadn't happened pressing against memories that refused to stay buried. His seals burned constantly now, no longer screaming, just… aching, like scar tissue learning a new shape.
When he woke, the sky was wrong.
Not broken.
Paused.
He lay within a circular field etched into the stone—ancient, deliberate. The air inside felt heavier, denser, like every second weighed more than it should.
Caleum stood at the edge.
"You shouldn't be conscious yet," the Lightning Dragon said.
Lys exhaled slowly. "Been hearing that a lot."
Caleum's eyes traced the fractures along Lys's seals. "You forced growth through damage. It worked. Barely."
"So this is recovery?" Lys asked, pushing himself upright with effort.
"No," Caleum replied. "This is training."
The field activated.
Time inside the circle compressed.
Lys felt it instantly—his heartbeat slowing while his thoughts accelerated, movements resisting him as if the air itself disapproved.
"Your power reacts instinctively," Caleum said, lightning crawling faintly across his scales. "But instinct alone will get you rewritten."
Lys clenched his fists. "Then teach me control."
Caleum didn't smile.
He struck.
Not with lightning—with timing.
The blow landed exactly when Lys thought it wouldn't. Pain exploded across his ribs as he was sent skidding across the stone, seals flaring reflexively.
"Again," Caleum said.
Minutes passed.
Then hours.
Then something stranger—growth without relief.
Caleum forced Lys to move while wounded, to channel power without excess, to breathe through moments that stretched unnaturally long. Every mistake punished. Every improvement acknowledged only by escalation.
"You fight like time owes you space," Caleum said during one pause. "It doesn't."
Lys steadied himself, breath fogging in compressed seconds. "Then I'll earn it."
Something shifted.
Not in the field.
Elsewhere.
Far beyond the city.
Beyond the lattice.
Beyond even the Eclipse's deepest reaches.
A throne of stillness existed where movement feared to intrude.
Upon it rested the Time Dragon.
Its form was vast yet restrained—scales like interlocked chronologies, eyes reflecting events that had not yet dared to happen. Around it hovered countless threads, each a possible future gently denied.
Before it stood a man.
Young.
Human.
Wrong.
The Incarnation.
"You felt him," the incarnation said calmly.
The Time Dragon did not answer immediately.
When it did, its voice did not echo.
It overwrote silence.
"He bends causality without belonging to it."
The incarnation's lips curved faintly. "Then he'll break."
"No," the Dragon replied. "He will force others to choose."
A pause.
"Is it time?" the incarnation asked.
The Dragon's gaze shifted—locking onto a future where lightning clashed with void, where Wardens fell, where a wounded dragon refused to kneel.
"…Not yet."
Back in the training field, Lys dropped to one knee, gasping.
Caleum watched him closely.
"You felt that," Lys said between breaths.
"Yes," Caleum replied. "And so did something else."
Lys forced himself upright.
"Good," he said. "Let it watch."
Caleum studied him for a long moment—then nodded.
"Rest," the Lightning Dragon said. "Tomorrow, we teach you how to fight something that doesn't lose time."
Above them, unseen by all but the future itself—
a clock without hands began to move.