The air in Lena's study was thick with the scent of herbs and old paper. Akero sat on a hard wooden chair while Lena stood behind him, her fingers lightly touching the point between his shoulder blades — the place where the fragile, fractured core of his source could be felt.
"You're tense again," she said, her voice gentle but unyielding. "Your source is defending itself even from my help. As if it thinks I'll hurt it even more."
"Maybe you will," Akero muttered, staring out the window at the garden where roses bloomed and withered at an unnaturally rapid pace, cycling every five minutes. Everything around him in Apelion bore signs of temporal distortion ever since he arrived.
"I won't," she said firmly. "But I have to understand what happened. What broke time inside you so completely?"
Akero remained silent. He watched as the fifth rose dissolved into petals during their conversation.
"There was a girl," he finally said, his voice flat, as if he were reading a report. "She had a laugh that sounded like a small bell chiming. She loved drying flowers and made teas that cured headaches and bad days."
Lena stopped touching him.
"What happened to her?"
"She died holding my hand. She said she loved me." Akero paused. "And I left her to die. Before that."
Lena drew a deep breath. "You're not the one who—"
"I am," he cut her off. A sharpness appeared in his voice, brief and precise. "My decision. My arrogance. My stupidity to believe… another man."
The name *Lucius* was not spoken. But it hung in the air, thick and poisonous.
"That man…" Lena tried.
"No," Akero interrupted calmly. "Not today."
---
They continued like that every day. Akero would reveal fragments — about Alabaster and his wise books now turned to ash, about Kael and his loud, sincere loyalty, about parents he barely remembered except as warmth and safety that ended in fire. Always indirectly. Always as if he were speaking about someone else.
Lena listened. Her healing became more careful. She realized she was not healing only a fractured source; she was trying to mend the cracks in his soul — a task like stopping a flood with bare hands.
One afternoon, as they walked through the Hall of Ancestors — a long corridor lined with portraits of Apelion's former rulers — Lena stopped before two paintings. A man with sharp but weary features, and a woman with eyes like Lena's, full of strength.
"My parents," she said softly. "Marcellus and Eleara de Mastrea."
Akero nodded.
"Rulers."
"Defenders," she corrected him. "Apelion was once called the 'Shield of Light.' We stood on the front line against the spread of the Unknown. My parents… led the final battle on the same mountain passes where you nearly lost your life."
Akero listened, but part of him was no longer in the hall.
*The same passes.*
*The same sky.*
*The place where destinies shatter like glass.*
"The Unknown killed them personally," Lena continued. "I saw through the fog of battle as Maximus, our most loyal knight, dragged me to safety. I saw how the dark form… swallowed their light."
Akero didn't blink.
*The Unknown does not kill at random.*
*He chooses.*
*And someone shows him the way.*
"After that," she said more quietly, "my source awakened. Fear, pain, helplessness… they turned into the power to see and heal damage in the sources of others. As if I wanted to fix what cannot be fixed — their disappearance."
*Fix the past,* Akero thought bitterly.
*How many of us has that already destroyed.*
"Maximus saved you," he said.
"Yes. And protected me from… others who wanted to exploit my grief." She paused, then added, "Some time after the battle, a man came. He looked wounded, lost. He spoke so convincingly… said he could help me avenge my parents. That Apelion could be strong again. That we should join a force capable of stopping the chaos."
No.
Akero already knew the answer.
His heart beat too slowly, too calmly — like before the end of the world.
"Which… man?" he asked, even though his throat was already burning.
"His name was Lucius."
Everything stopped.
The air.
The light.
Time.
The word struck him like a knife that had already been there once before.
*"Of course."*
*Always him.*
*You always realize too late that he was already there.*
"LUCIUS?!" he roared.
His voice shattered against the marble walls, returning in echoes like the howl of another, older Akero — one who did not yet know how much he would lose. He turned toward her, his eyes burning.
"You… talked to him?! Trusted him?!"
*No.*
*Tell me you didn't.*
*Tell me I wasn't too late here as well.*
"Akero, calm down!" Lena shouted, stepping back. "He was clever, he manipulated—"
"MANIPULATED?!"
The word came out twisted, almost like laughter — but it wasn't laughter; it was the sound of something breaking.
"He's a traitor! A liar! A murderer!" he thundered. "He destroyed everything I ever loved! My parents, my friends, my—!"
Nea.
The name burned in his throat like an ember.
*If I say it… I'll fall apart.*
"And you were stupid enough to listen to him?!"
The moment the words left his mouth, he knew they were too harsh.
But the anger had already been unleashed.
"I was young! I was grieving!" Lena yelled. "He took advantage of that! But Maximus exposed him! He confronted him and drove him away! Why… why does this affect you so much? What is Lucius to you?"
Akero breathed as if he were drowning.
*Because wherever he appears… the world dies.*
*Because behind every great loss… his name stands.*
*Because if I connect all the dots out loud… this girl will never sleep again.*
He looked at her.
She wasn't lying.
She didn't know.
*"Another one he used."*
"Nothing," he said quietly. Too quietly for what he carried inside. "He means nothing to me. Just a name from the past."
He turned to leave, but stopped a step from the exit.
"That Maximus," he added without turning around. "A good man. Protect him."
And he left.
Lena remained alone before her parents' portraits, with the feeling that someone had just opened the door to the truth — but hadn't let it come inside.
In the days that followed, Akero changed. His healing progressed — but not as Lena had expected. Instead of integration, he **sealed** his source. He raised a barrier.
"This isn't healing," she said worriedly. "This is confinement."
"Power is the past," he replied. "Stability is all I have left."
She understood. He hadn't recovered. He had **adapted**.
On the eve of his departure, Lena brought him a small silver pocket watch.
"A temporal stabilizer," she said. "Seven days. Seven days in which you can use your full power."
"And after?" he asked.
She kept her gaze on the watch.
"After… time will take what it considers excess."
"What?"
Silence lingered.
"However," she said softly, "the world will no longer know what to call you."
Akero nodded, as if he had already known.
Later, he put on the mask. Pale metal. An eternal smile.
"If they're erasing me anyway," he said, "let what remains be what I choose."
"What should I call you?" Lena asked.
The mask turned toward her.
"The Broken One."
She watched him leave.
For a moment, it felt as though something slipped from her mind.
Not a face.
Not a voice.
Just a name.
She blinked.
The watch ticked.