Chapter 5: The Unseen Watchers & A Test of Loyalty
The spike, Kaelen's first deliberate creation, became his secret totem. He hid it beneath a loose stone in the cellar, a touchstone for his fledgling will. The clarity from that night didn't magically solve his problems, but it shifted something internal. The pounding feedback from using his power lessened, replaced by a manageable mental strain, like the ache of a muscle used properly for the first time.
His training with Vale took on a new dimension. No longer just trying to change objects, Kaelen practiced maintaining his "Anchor"—the core narrative of self—while imposing smaller, simpler definitions.
"Focus not on the 'what,' but on the 'how much,'" Vale instructed, placing three identical pebbles on the floor. "Define the first as 'slightly heavier.' The second as 'slightly warmer.' The third, leave alone. Precision is your new goal. Brute force is the weapon of the mad."
Kaelen opened the grimoire. The void-presence felt more like a watchful collaborator now than a hungry predator. He focused on his Anchor: I am the will that persists. He then layered a new, minor narrative onto the first pebble: Your mass is increased by a factor of one-tenth.
In the reflection, the pebble's image darkened a shade. In reality, it sank a fraction of an inch into the packed earth floor. The second pebble he defined as holding the memory of sunlight. Its surface grew faintly warm to the touch. The third remained unchanged.
Vale's eyes gleamed as he took measurements. "Remarkable. Near-zero psychic leakage. You're not fighting the world's story; you're proposing a minor, plausible edit. This is control. Fragile, but real."
This incremental progress did nothing to thaw the atmosphere in the barracks. If anything, Silas's frosty vigilance intensified. Garrison continued to treat Kaelen as furniture, but now with a sharper edge of warning. "Keep your editing in the cellar, runt. We don't need the walls deciding they're water one day."
Only Riven's behavior shifted notably. She began including him in her own brutal, close-quarters combat drills. "Your fancy book won't save you if someone gets inside your guard," she'd say, disarming him for the twentieth time with a flick of her wrist. "Your body needs a story too. Make it 'hard to break.'" Her training was merciless but practical, and for the first time, Kaelen didn't feel like a passive subject in the tower; he felt, however grudgingly, like a recruit.
The fragile equilibrium shattered a week later when Inspector Vale arrived, his face uncharacteristically grim, trailed by two individuals Kaelen had never seen.
The man was tall and broad, clad in the pristine white-and-gold armor of the Imperial Justicars, the elite enforcers who answered directly to the Mage-King's council. His face was handsome in a severe, carved-marble way, and a Platinum-graded grimoire with a glaring sun motif hung at his hip. The woman beside him wore the deep indigo robes of a Senior Curator, her expression one of detached academic scrutiny. Her grimoire was Gold, but its cover swirled with shifting, runic patterns.
"Squad Obsidian," Vale said, his voice tight. "This is Justicar Solaris of the Sunfall Legion, and Curator Primus Lyra. They are here to conduct a… competency evaluation."
Justicar Solaris's gaze swept the room, lingering on Kaelen with the intensity of a spotlight. "The report of an Unclassified anomaly with Blank Page signatures has reached the Council of Stabilization. Such things cannot be left to provincial observation." His voice was deep, resonant, and utterly devoid of warmth.
Garrison stepped forward, a wall of muscle and stone. "He is under our purview. Obsidian handles anomalies."
"And your handling is now under review," Solaris stated, not even looking at him, his eyes fixed on Kaelen. "The boy will demonstrate his capabilities. We will assess the risk. The options are continued observation under new management, permanent containment, or sanctioned purgation."
The word 'purgation' hung in the cold air.
"He has made significant progress in control—" Vale began.
"Your subjective assessments are noted, Inspector," Curator Lyra interrupted, her voice like rustling pages. "We require objective data. A live-field test has been arranged."
Riven's hand drifted to the hilt of a dagger. "What kind of test?"
Solaris finally looked away from Kaelen, a faint, unpleasant smile on his lips. "A retrieval. A minor artifact, the Chime of Fractured Hours, has been stolen from a Guild transport. It is Bronze-grade, but its magic causes disjointed temporal perceptions in a small radius—moments repeating, skipping, slowing. The thief, a minor talent with a Silver wind-grimoire, is holed up in the Ironworks, a labyrinth of abandoned machinery. The test is simple: Squad Obsidian, with the anomaly included, will retrieve the artifact and apprehend the thief. We will observe. His performance will determine his fate."
It was a trap. Everyone in the room knew it. They were being sent into a complex, dangerous environment to perform a delicate task with an unstable element, under the eyes of judges who already suspected the answer.
"We don't operate under surveillance," Garrison growled.
"You do today," Solaris said, his tone brooking no argument. "Or you can stand down, and we will take the anomaly into custody now for immediate evaluation."
Silas, who had been preternaturally still, gave a single, sharp nod to Garrison. The big man's jaw clenched, but he stepped back. The choice was made: a dangerous mission with a chance, however slim, was better than handing Kaelen over immediately.
"Fine," Garrison spat. "We move in one hour. Kaelen, you're on point with Riven. No independent action. You follow her lead to the letter. Your only job is to not die and not make things worse."
---
The Ironworks was a cathedral of rust and shadows. Towering, silent forge-hammers loomed like petrified giants. Conveyor belts formed metal pathways over pits of forgotten slag. The air smelled of oxidized iron and ozone, the latter a lingering trace of the stolen artifact's power.
From a gantry high above, Justicar Solaris and Curator Lyra watched, their forms shrouded in a light-bending spell. Vale stood nervously beside them, his instruments ready.
"Move," Garrison's voice echoed softly in the cavernous space. "Riven, take left flank. Silas, right. Watch for temporal distortions."
They advanced. Kaelen's heart hammered against his ribs, his senses stretched thin. He carried his grimoire open to the first page, the mirror reflecting the industrial gloom. The void within was watchful, silent.
They found the first distortion near a massive, cold furnace. A shower of sparks from a long-dead weld hung in the air, flickering in a perfect, three-second loop. The tick-tick-tick of a ghostly hammer struck the same anvil over and over. Stepping into the area made Kaelen's stomach lurch, his sense of time stuttering.
Silas moved forward, his grimoire glowing. "Spell: Chronos Frost." He exhaled a stream of shimmering, blue-silver mist that settled over the looped events. The frost didn't stop them, but it encased them in a glistening shell, muffling the effect and marking the area as hazardous.
"The thief is using the Chime to create these as defensive traps," Silas reported, his breath frosting. "They get worse closer to the source."
They pushed deeper, encountering more severe distortions: a corridor where the last ten seconds of sound replayed in a jarring cacophony; a patch where Kaelen's own movements felt like he was wading through thick syrup. Each one Silas contained with increasing effort, his face growing paler.
They found the thief in the central control room, a balcony overlooking a canyon of dead machinery. He was a wiry man with wild eyes, clutching a cracked, bell-like bronze artifact in one hand, his Silver grimoire—depicting a tornado—open in the other. Around him, the air shimmered like a heat haze, and time itself seemed to stutter and weep.
"Stay back!" the thief shrieked, shaking the Chime. A dissonant bong echoed, not through air, but through the fabric of the moment.
The world fractured.
For Kaelen, it was sheer chaos. He saw Riven, mid-lunge, snap back to her starting position twice. He heard Garrison's shout come out as a stretched, low moan. He felt his own heartbeat trip over itself, skipping, then racing. Silas cried out, his frost spell shattering as the localized time-field became too unstable to bind.
"I'll break time here before I go back to the cages!" the thief screamed, ringing the Chime again.
A wave of temporal shear washed over them. Garrison, caught in the edge of it, roared as his stonefist arm reverted to flesh, then petrified again in a rapid, painful cycle. Riven was flung sideways, her movements becoming a blur of stop-motion.
Kaelen, shielded slightly by being behind Garrison, felt the distortion like a physical pressure on his mind. His Anchor wavered. The narrative of I am the will that persists frayed under the assault of nothing persists, everything repeats, everything breaks.
From the gantry, Solaris watched, his expression cold. "The anomaly is faltering. As expected. Unstable."
Vale pleaded, "He needs to use his power! To counter it!"
"And risk a temporal paradox or a full unraveling?" Lyra mused clinically. "The data would be fascinating."
Down below, Silas, gritting his teeth against the temporal storm, shouted to Kaelen. "You have to define the field! Not the artifact, the effect! Make it linear!"
It was an insane order. Define time? But Silas, the cautious one, was telling him to act.
The thief raised the Chime for a third, potentially catastrophic ring.
Kaelen's fear crested and broke. He couldn't define time. But he could define his experience of it. He slammed his will into his Anchor, reinforcing it, then layered a new, desperate narrative onto the shimmering distortion field around him and his squad.
This is not a fracture. This is a single, coherent moment. The past is fixed. The present is now. The future is next.
He poured every ounce of his will, his desire to protect the squad—even the one who hated him and the one who feared him—into that definition. He wasn't editing time; he was editing their story within it.
In the grimoire's mirror, the shimmering haze in the reflection smoothed out, becoming a clear, still image of the control room.
In reality, the stuttering, looping chaos within a ten-foot radius of Kaelen snapped into sync. The world became real-time again for them. Garrison's arm stabilized. Riven landed in a controlled roll. Silas gasped in relief.
The thief stared, confused by the island of stability in his temporal storm.
It was the opening Riven needed. Freed from the distortion, she was a crimson bolt. A thrown dagger knocked the Chime from the thief's hand. A second, flat-bladed strike from her pommel cracked into his temple, and he crumpled.
The second the thief fell unconscious, the wider temporal distortions began to dissipate with a sound like sighing glass.
Silence descended, broken only by the drip of distant water.
Kaelen slumped to his knees, blood dripping from his nose and one ear, a deep, throbbing ache in the core of his mind. He had held the narrative against a force that broke causality itself. The cost was immense.
From above, Solaris and Lyra descended on platforms of light. The Justicar looked at the stabilized scene, the retrieved artifact, the unconscious thief, and finally at Kaelen, who was struggling to stand.
"A localized reality anchor applied to a temporal field," Lyra murmured, her eyes wide with avaricious curiosity. "Fascinating. He didn't dispel it; he created a pocket of narrative immunity."
Solaris's cold eyes showed no praise, only recalculated caution. "The power is confirmed. Its application in a squad context is… marginally effective." He looked at Garrison. "Your assessment, Squad Captain?"
Garrison looked from Kaelen, who had just saved them all from being temporally mangled, to the imperious Justicar. He saw the trap. Praising Kaelen might see him taken for "higher study." Condemning him might see him purged.
"He followed orders," Garrison rumbled finally, the words like pulled teeth. "He acted as part of the squad. He's a liability, but he's our liability. Obsidian will continue his containment and training."
Solaris held his gaze for a long moment, then gave a curt nod. "Very well. Continued observation status is granted. But be warned, Captain. The stability of the realm is the paramount concern. If the anomaly's narrative ever threatens the Empire's story, there will be no second chance. We will be watching."
As Solaris and Lyra departed with the Chime, Vale rushed to Kaelen's side, checking his vitals. "You defined a temporal anomaly… the mental strain should have liquefied your brain…"
Riven offered Kaelen a hand up, her grip firm. "Not bad, sparky. You told time to shut up and sit down. I like that."
Silas approached last. He didn't speak. He simply met Kaelen's exhausted gaze and gave a single, slow, acknowledging nod. It wasn't trust. But it was, for the first time, a recognition of utility that outweighed immediate fear.
Back in the tower, as night fell, Kaelen lay on his cot, his mind a landscape of quiet agony. He had passed the test, but he had seen the true face of the power above him: not curiosity, but cold, calculated risk assessment. He was a tool that had performed adequately, nothing more.
He reached under his pillow, his fingers finding the cold metal of the spike he'd created. He held onto its solid, defined reality.
In the shadows, Silas wrote in his journal, his script urgent: 'Field Test: Ironworks. Subject successfully imposed a stabilizing narrative on a Grade-2 Temporal Anomaly. Power shows defensive and supportive utility, not just destructive. Justicar Solaris involved. Political stakes have escalated. Subject remains an asset of unpredictable value. Recommendation: Expedite training. He may become our only shield against the very powers now judging him.'
He closed the journal, looking at Kaelen's still form. The calculus had changed. The boy was no longer just a threat to be managed. In the eyes of the empire's watchers, they were all becoming anomalies together.
And high in the Council of Stabilization, Justicar Solaris presented his report. The verdict: "Anomaly Kaelen is a viable, if volatile, asset. The Obsidian Guard is to remain his custodians. However, the Blank Page signature is confirmed. Mobilize the 'Canon Brigade.' If the page cannot be controlled, it must be torn from the book."