The Glass Cathedral stood on the edge of the capital, a relic from a more devout age. Its walls and vaulted ceilings were made entirely of stained glass, depicting the tales of saints and heroes. By day, it was a kaleidoscope of light. By night, under the cold light of the moon, it was a tomb of frozen color and deep, intersecting shadows.
I arrived at five minutes to midnight. I hadn't told Seraphina. I hadn't told Alaric. This was my problem. My responsibility. The thought of Elara, with her kind eyes and quiet strength, being a "shard" to be broken… it stirred an emotion I hadn't felt in a long time: a cold, focused anger.
I didn't bother with the door. I paused time and walked through the solid wall as if it were mist, emerging into the cavernous main hall.
He was waiting for me. The Seeker. He stood before the altar, no longer in noble's disguise but in his dark robes. He wasn't alone. Two other figures, similarly robed, stood flanking him. Their hands were raised, and the air around them hummed with a low, persistent frequency that grated against my senses. It was a temporal dampening field. Crude, but potent. An attempt to make the fabric of time resistant to manipulation, like trying to thicken water into mud.
"Welcome, Anomaly," the lead Seeker said, his voice echoing in the silent cathedral.
"I prefer Leo," I said, my voice calm. I let my mop, which I'd brought out of habit, rest on the glass floor. "You went to a lot of trouble. Where is she?"
"The girl is safe. For now." He gestured around us. "You feel it, don't you? The Stilling. Your power is not so easily wielded here."
I flexed my will. He was right. Stopping time here would be like trying to swim through tar. It would take significant effort. They had planned well.
"This isn't a negotiation," the second Seeker spoke, a woman with a voice like grinding stones. "You will submit. You will be studied. Your power will serve the Scorpion's vision of a ordered timeline."
"And if I refuse?"
The lead Seeker smiled, a thin, cruel expression. "Then we shatter the stained glass. All of it. The resulting temporal shockwave, focused through our arts, will not only kill the girl, whose life-force we have tethered to the central window, but it will also create a wound in this city's timeline so severe it will never heal. Thousands will be lost in paradox. All because of your defiance."
My eyes went to the massive rose window above the altar. It depicted a saint battling a serpent. And there, woven into the lead lines of the serpent's body with threads of faint green energy, was a signature I recognized. Elara's. They had told the truth. She was the trigger.
They had me in a checkmate. Fight them, and I risked a cataclysm. Submit, and I became a lab rat for fanatics.
They expected me to choose one of their options. They saw the world in binaries: conquer or submit.
They failed to understand the third option available to a true master of time: to redefine the game itself.
I let my shoulders slump, a picture of defeated resignation. "You win," I said, my voice heavy. "I will submit."
I took a step forward, then another, my head bowed. I could feel their triumph, a hot, smug wave emanating from them. They saw a weapon being sheathed.
What they didn't see was the microscopic adjustments I was making with every step. I wasn't fighting the Stilling field. I was learning it. I was tracing its resonant frequency, mapping its points of origin—the two flanking Seekers who were maintaining it.
I reached the center of the nave, directly between them.
"This is a wise choice," the lead Seeker said, pulling a dark, rune-etched collar from his robes. The final shackle.
"It is," I agreed.
Then I moved.
I didn't stop time. I reversed it. But not for the entire cathedral. Not even for a whole person.
I performed three hyper-local, surgical reversals, each lasting a fraction of a second.
For the Seeker on my left, I reversed the neural impulses in the part of his brain responsible for maintaining his focus on the dampening field. His concentration shattered.
For the Seeker on my right, I reversed the flow of mana in the specific channel she was using to power the field. It backfired, causing a painful psychic feedback.
The Stilling field flickered and died.
Their eyes widened in shock. It had happened too fast for them to comprehend.
"Wha—?" the lead Seeker began.
I didn't let him finish. I snapped my fingers.
The sound was like a thunderclap in the silent cathedral. Every single pane of stained glass in the entire building—every saint, every hero, every demon—froze. The moonlight reflecting off them solidified. The entire space was cast in an eerie, absolute stillness.
I looked at the lead Seeker, his face frozen in a mask of shock, the dark collar still in his outstretched hand.
"You made two mistakes," I said, my voice the only sound in the frozen universe of the cathedral. "First, you threatened a friend."
I walked up to him and plucked the collar from his inert fingers. I examined it, then, with a thought, disintegrated it into iron dust.
"Second," I continued, "you thought your field could stop me. It only made the process more... interesting."
I walked over to the rose window. The tether of green energy linking it to Elara was frozen mid-pulse. It was a delicate, vile piece of magic. I couldn't just sever it; the backlash could hurt her. So, I carefully unpicked the spell, reversing its creation until the foreign energy vanished, leaving only Elara's pure life-signature, which I gently guided back to her, wherever she was.
The threat was neutralized.
Now, for the cleanup.
I couldn't let them remember this. They knew too much. But I wasn't a murderer. Not over this.
I stood before the three frozen Seekers and reached into their minds. It was a violation, but a necessary one. I carefully edited the last hour, crafting a new memory. They had lured me here, but I had escaped at the last moment by unleashing a wild, uncontrolled burst of temporal energy that shattered every window in the cathedral before I fled. A display of power, but a feral, untamable one. A failed mission.
I left one thing untouched: a deep, subconscious fear. A fear of the "Anomaly" they could not control. A fear that would make their masters think twice before coming for me so directly again.
I walked back to my original position, picked up my mop, and snapped my fingers a second time.
Time crashed back into motion.
The sound was deafening. Every window in the Glass Cathedral exploded outward in a shower of a million colored shards, raining down on the stones outside like a storm of broken rainbows.
The Seekers were thrown to the ground by the concussive blast of the simulated explosion. They scrambled up, disoriented, their minds already grafting the false memory into place.
"He's gone!" the female Seeker yelled over the ringing in their ears. "The recoil... it was too wild!"
The lead Seeker stared at the empty space where I had been, then at the gaping, glass-toothed holes where the windows had been. A primal fear had taken root in his gut, just as I had intended.
"He's not a tool," he whispered, his voice trembling. "He's a calamity."
Outside, hidden in the shadows of a nearby alley, I watched them flee. The cathedral was a wreck. It was a mess. But Elara was safe. The city was safe. My secret was, for now, preserved.
I looked down at the mop in my hand. A janitor's work was never done. There would be questions, investigations, but that was a problem for tomorrow.
For now, I turned and walked back toward the academy, the silent guardian of a timeline only I could see.