The Illusion of Time
Zephyr floated with Fate's realm, suspended in a conditional existence in which time could not claim them. Golden air shimmered like liquid, yet without the sun or the moon, there could exist no passing of day into night. Great lances of the land yawned skyward, marble and crystal, untouched by decay and impermanent grandeur.
It was impossible to know for how long, moments—if they could be termed so—had elapsed since he had come. Solis and Liora remained by his side, as steadfast companions, guiding him through this peculiar and tangible world.
But still, he felt sick. An ominous feeling coiled in his stomach. If everything around were eternal, in a universe where time was unfettered, what, then, kept them there? What would prevent them from getting swept away in the coiling tendrils of fate?
He turned toward his companions, the words bubbling unbidden from his mouth.
"How does time work around here?"
Liora tipped her head, gilded strands of hair catching the unending light of the realm. A glimmer of enlightenment creased her lips—the smile was almost an indulgence.
"This is a very simple concept," she let spill, her voice a ripple over a smooth lake. "Nothing escapes time. Not even fate. But we are not bound by it in the land of fate. We move freely—backwards, forwards, sideways, through strands that weave existence itself. Only the Fate Keepers and Fate herself can do this. You, however, cannot."
Zephyr frowned. "Why?"
His companion, Solis, who had been silently amused, finally chose to speak. "Because there is always a price. For anything. If we are to have it our way on time, then we owe it respect. There has to be a balance."
He lifted a hand and gestured into the distance. A golden tower loomed on the horizon, greater than anything Zephyr had ever seen. It pulsed quietly in a rhythmic glow, its exterior turning like time itself weaved within.
"Do you see that tower?" Solis asked. "That is where time gets tethered. The Pillar of Present. For any time travel, if one wishes to tread the path to past or future, it must be traversed through the doors. But," he gravelled, his eyes darkening, "the price is unknown."
A shiver experienced by Zephyr. The gravity with which Solis spoke painted the words with a tint of warning, rather than mere uncertainty.
"But then... how do I know when it is day or night?" Zephyr pushed past the unsettling thought.
Liora smiled and pulled something from the folds of her robes. With a flick of her wrist, she tossed the object to him.
Zephyr caught it and turned it over in his hands. It looked somewhat like a pocket watch, but instead of numbers on its face, the round disk was divided in half —the left half painted turquoise blue with the image of a sun, while the right half was deep indigo sprinkled with glittering stars. A single, delicate hand rested at the center, pointing between the two halves.
"This is a Fate Keeper's Watch," Liora went on to explain. "Whenever we wish to step into the mortal world, we think of a place and press this button—" she pointed to a small dial on the side, "—and it will tell us if it is day or night there."
Zephyr's fingers ran over the smooth glass as he watched the tiny hand fluctuating between the two halves. "And what if I break it?" he frowned.
Liora laughed, like distant wind chimes. "Then time will break with it. And that is not something you want to happen."
He swallowed. "Right."
Still, something didn"t add up.
He glanced back at the half-built structure they had been working on, then back to Liora and Solis. He had never seen them rest. Never seen them stop.
"Then... when do you rest?" he asked.
Liora blinked. Then, as if he had asked something completely ridiculous, she let out a soft scoff.
"Rest? We do not rest, Zephyr. Fate never rests."
Zephyr's breath caught.
There was a certainty behind her voice that was absolute. Still, it unsettled him.
He looked toward the distant towering spires reaching far beyond the golden haze with swirling thoughts of questions he was unsure he was ready to ask.
Reflections of Home
The structure was finally complete.
Zephyr stepped into the dwelling with Solis and Liora, half-expecting something strange and unfamiliar; instead, what greeted him was something monotonously near home.
The space was modest—a single room with a small kitchen, an adjoining washroom. The walls bore the same muted tones as his former quarters, and the furniture arrangement felt reflectively unsettlingly familiar. Even the scent in the air was December-warm, causing a remnant at the bottom of his chest to stir awake.
He stepped forward slowly, dragging his fingers over the wooden table in the center of the room. The grain, the heft of it; it was exactly the same as that of the one he had left behind.
Frowning slightly, he said, "Why does it look like my home?"
Solis propped himself casually against the doorway with an unreadable expression on his face. "Because we used it as a reference for the Fate Workers. A familiar place would make it easier for you to exist here."
Zephyr's fingers tightened against the table as he sneered at the two of them. The very thought of it made him uneasy. It felt too precise. Too perfect. A recreation spun not off the visuals but the memory.
He took in a deep breath.
"If you need any assistance, call our names, and we will attend to you," Liora interjected gently yet firmly. "For now, rest."
And with that, they both departed.
The sudden silence was disarming.
Zephyr was, for the first time since stepping into this strange realm, left alone.
Slowly exhaling, he rubbed his forearms as if shaking off something sinister that had been watching him.
He needed a moment.
He dipped into the tub to ease the tightness in his shoulders, but the stifling unease in his chest remained. By the time he lay down in his bed, sleep kept evading him—his mind unwillingly filled with ephemeral shadows and voicings just out of reach.
When he finally rose, his restlessness had not faltered.
He couldn't stay here—not yet. So he left.
Beyond lay Fate, stretching infinitely, streaming golden light to form soft halos over the distant spires.
Zephyr moved around, watching the Fate Keepers bustle about with purpose—never stopping, never hesitating. The streets became a mighty loom, with each Fates Keeper taking their thread, each evidently engaged in a task that none but themselves understood.
None appeared to pay him any mind.
At first, he thought them indifferent. The deeper he stepped along the lane, however, and some began to notice him.
They flicked some unreadable response from silverish heads his way. A few of them approached with ghostly light, deliberately sweeping around him like silent sentinels.
Watching him.
Judging him.
Yet none spoke.
Zephyr had prickled skin under their scrutiny, but he would not yield to his rising unease. He simply forged ahead and strolled past them in silence.
Before long, he stood at the base of the golden tower Solis had mentioned before, looking challengingly down upon him, its intricate carvings shifting just slightly as if the structure were alive.
But it was not the tower that interested Zephyr.
It was what lay beyond it.
Throwing caution to the winds, he rounded the massive structure onto the other side.
Instantly, the air changed.
Whereas before, the land pulsated with brilliance and energy, this side stood in ghastly calm. The golden glow muted to an off-white hue, so inactive it was almost as though time stopped in his favor.
And oddest of all: there was no one here.
No Fate Keepers. No movement.
The land stretched a perfect mirror image of the place he had just left, only… deserted.
Zephyr's breath hitched.
Why?
Why had this place been left untouched?
Why had no one crossed this threshold?
He took another step forward, the hush deepening around him, wrapping around him in some unseen strings.
Something was here.
Or rather… something had once been here.
And whatever it was, the Fate Keepers wanted nothing to do with it.
The Forgotten Reflection
Zephyr took another careful step forward, his boots barely making any sound against the ground.
It was as if the air swallowed every sound.
This side of the land was an exact replica of the one he had just departed from: every bridge, every structure, and every winding path existed exactly in their places. But here sat the Fate Keepers.
No one walked.
No life.
Even the golden tower—which he turned back to see—faced him directly, yet he had walked around it with assurance. That thought really sent a shivery pang down his back.
It felt like stepping into an illusion, reflecting the other side of reality but without the warmth of possibility.
He knelt by the floor, feeling his fingers upon the smooth ground, expecting dust or decay.
Nothing.
No age. No use. It was as if this place had been abandoned in a hurry—abandoned by unseen hands unaffected by time.
His heart raced, and all senses heightened at the eerie silence.
What was this place?
And even more imperative... why had it been left behind?
He walked for what seemed to be hours.
There was no telling time here, no sun or moon to guide him. Even the structures were monochromatic—every one just the same as any on the other side, and each encased in some absolute and untimely stillness.
Until he came across something that wasn't a reflection.
It had looked like another building at a distance. But closeness? No, not quite.
This one was called a bit of character from a very distant tangent: unlike Fate Keepers, who resided in equally smooth, equally blandly pleasant buildings, the one before him had some signature of difference; on a very subtle note, the curves in the architecture had more variance, less ethereal in its presence, lesser in the golden glow that possessed all other buildings that merely gleamed and pulsed; it stood in shadow, so deeply defined by a very gray tone that absorbed light instead of reflecting it.
Zephyr's fingers twitched.
This was not built for the Fate Keepers.
But who was it for, then?
A slow terror settled in his stomach.
Here, in this forgotten silence where time itself seemed not to be moving anymore, he was alone.
So, then who had lived here before?
And even more chillingly... why weren't they here any longer?
The Echoes of Love
Zephyr stood hesitant at the entrance of the grand structure: darkened, high, and concealing all within its eerie stillness backed by the deserted mirror world.
Age-old on the outside, it seemed to have withstood the test of time at the very last moment. But with the smallest sound from inside, his breath came caught.
Somebody was inside.
Curiosity-or maybe something deeper-urged him toward it.
The door creaked gently as he moved it, revealing a breath-stealing landscape.
Majestic was the inside.
Unlike the modest and uniform designs occupied by the Fate Keepers, this was carved with elegance and lavishness. Floors gleamed as if freshly polished every day, reflecting the gentle glow of lanterns eternally burning. Intricate patterns danced across high vaulted ceilings, displaying constellations Zephyr had never even seen before.
In the center of the entrance hall stood the grand fountain, endlessly repeating water flow, shimmering an unnatural iridescence.
An indoor garden stretched like an infinite distance to the left, vines curling along marble pillars, blooms luminescent in the dim light. Time, it seemed, deserted world plants.
The most striking feature, though, was the throne room.
Zephyr experienced a strange weight set down in his chest as he stepped inside.
Not what would step much into a throne room-opulence, dominance, power-Senya, dear. It felt desolate.
There was the grand throne, a statement of intertwining gold and obsidian, completely empty. Dust piled around its base, untouched, unclaimed.
Instead, seated off to the side on a far smaller chair, was Fate herself.
She was on her elbow beside the armrest, fingers resting lightly against her temple, eyes staring into an empty space ahead of her.
She looked sad.
Like she had lost something.
Or someone.
Zephyr swallowed uneasily, shifting awkwardly on his feet before clearing his throat.
"Hi."
His voice echoed painfully against the high ceilings.
Fate tilted her head backward, flickering her expression into something unpredictable. She composed her features into one of soft, pleasant smiles, one that did little to mask the grief beneath it.
"Hi, Zephyr. What brings you here?"
Her tone was casual, yet there was an unnatural lightness to it; it seemed as if she were trying to brush away something beneath it. But Zephyr had seen the way she had clutched something in her hands before tucking it quickly out of sight.
"Oh, I was just roaming around," he admitted, casting a curious glance in her direction. "What are you doing?"
He expected her to totally sidestep the question and say something meaningless and vague.
"Ah, yes. I was thinking about love, Zephyr."
Heavy words, laden with age and brokenness far deeper than his own.
"Let me tell you, Zephyr: it is not always what you expect."
There was pain in her voice, tucked deep away beneath the empirical control of tone.
"What does that mean?" he asked, feeling the urge to dig much deeper. Fate just exhaled through her nose again and turned her head slightly as if weighing her words. "Love cannot change people, Zephyr. If you try very hard, the only one who will suffer is you."
It was a simple talk, and yet it made those few words linger like some unspoken tragedy with a very sad tone in her voice.
Thoughts spun through Zephyr's mind. Whom had she once loved? What did she lose?
But before he could shrink the courage to ask, she was already propelling herself upward, her graceful mannerism betraying none of the dejection she carried.
She was leaving.
Zephyr stepped closer. "What happened here?"
He spoke loud enough to break the silence. Fate halted at the doorway, still with her back pressed against him.
"I'm not saying anything."
Then, barely above a whisper, she murmured -
"One mistake."
And she walked out, leaving Zephyr completely alone in the forsaken throne room, staring at that empty power seat while the echoes of her words settled deep in his bones.
The Ruins of a Love Forgotten
Zephyr followed Fate as she led him through the deserted land where his every footfall was lost to the saturated silence of lifeless stone paths striding ahead of him. The silence grew thicker, hanging down over him as if something he could not see was pressing upon him.
She halted at a dilapidated bridge, staring over the ruins with an absent look.
'This,' she finally spoke softly, more at that moment than before, 'was the original Land of Fate.'
Zephyr turned his nose in a direction opposite the rest of the tableau. The beautiful, haunting landscape mirrored only the same world from which he came- this was completely lifeless. Same high towers, same great bridges, same sort of pathways; yet, there was an utter absence of vitality. As if Time had simply walked out of this ghost town, leaving behind those tiny echoes of what once lived.
Fate moved ahead, trailing her fingers along what may have been once a glorious balcony's stone railing.
"It was alive," she quietly spoke, more to herself. "Fate Keepers would bustle through those streets weaving the threads of destiny while we would sing, dance, and laugh under the endless sky. Beautiful. Hopeful."
There was a wistful small smile on her face but in her eyes it did not reach her
Then as if the shadow crossed over the memory, the warmth drained from her face.
"Everything seemed perfect. Until I met him."
Zephyr stilled.
" Hmmm...? " he echoed warily.
Fate sighed then, a long measured breath, and walked past a pile of statue debris whose eroded head had long lost its identity.
"Fate Keepers don,'t have love, that's why, Zephyr." The last two were spoken slowly and deliberately as if convincing herself. "We're out of it, over it. But I didn't care. I wanted to be with him."
It was the way she said it-wanted. Past tense-that made his heart ache.
"I brought him here," she continued, passing through a barely-alive archway that had withstood time's cruelty. "Showed him everything. Gave him all that he asked for."
Her tone carried none of the anger that might have accompanied that statement but also bore a hollowness-a deep quiet ache that had never been healed.
There wasn't anything Zephyr could think of to say at that moment, so he followed her farther.
Around the buildings, fissures had increased, some half-destroyed, others swallowed up by creeping vines, as if nature itself had attempted to cleanse the incident from memory.
Fate stopped in front of a collapsed courtyard.
There's a fountain-a remnant in the middle of all that mess.
Once-called glory, the structure was a ruin without any drop of the water it once had. Some marbles lay scattered across cracked tiles, and at the very heart of it, a single carved figure remained half-buried in the rubble.
Zephyr edged closer, dusting away the dirt.
It was a statue of two persons.
One of them was her, Fate-carved in an elegant pose, reaching outward with an extended hand.
The other... was unrecognizable.
Only the remnants of one arm were left, the rest of the statue violently destroyed.
Zephyr's breath caught in his throat. Future: Fate gazed upon him in silence. "But then... the true colors showed." "Her voice, though below a whisper, rang like a thunder across the empty land below."
He turned to her but could not catch her eye. Instead, she roamed over the sapphire pool that was wrecked by time, over the ghosts of what used to be.
"He ruined everything."
With the suddenness of a chill, Zephyr felt it creep up his spine.
"Why?" he asked before he could stop himself.
The response was not immediate on Fate's part, as she bent and dusted off the remains of the statue under her fingers. Then, without lifting her gaze, she said—
"Because love is not enough to change someone, Zephyr. And I learned that too late."
Silence hung thick and suffocating between them.
He wanted to inquire further-to understand and know. But the way she sat with her fingers over the fractured stone forced him to hesitation about asking her any further questions.
Some wounds aren't meant to be opened.
Fate stood suddenly, brushing the dust off her hands.
"I couldn't bear to erase it," she admitted, surveying the devastation, "so I left it for now. And I built a new Land of Fate."
Zephyr turned around to look back at what surrounded them in desolation-it was a reflection of what everything once was.
An abandoned space.
A dead love.
And a story that is left unfinished.
He gulped his questions down and forced himself to follow her as she walked away.
A Debt to Time
Fate took a final glance at the ruin, and those golden eyes of hers were dimmed slightly with something that was nameless to Zephyr.
"This is the payment for my mistake," she murmured almost to herself.
Her fingers flickered along her side as if to indicate a desire to reach out-to touch, to clutch something perhaps long gone within her own heart; but she turned away instead, the expression on her face unreadable.
Before Zephyr could say anything, Fate lifted her hand, and just like that, the world around them shifted.
The decaying land faded, swallowed by a ripple in space, and when Zephyr opened his eyes again, they were back.
The new Land of Fate.
The shift was grotesque.
Where once nothing but the hush of silence and decay lay, now the soft hum of life filled the air. Fate Keepers moved about in their endless chores with their robes trailing like streaks of woven light. The splendid edifices gleamed under the golden sky, untouched by the burden of loss.
Zephyr breathed deeply. The energy here felt different. Lighter. Brighter.
Fate studied him carefully.
"And I would appreciate it if you don't mention it to the Fate Keepers. They cannot get in, hence they do not know it exists."
Zephyr turned sharply to her.
"They don't know?"
Fate just shook her head. Her face revealed nothing.
A secret world, an outlawed past.
And she had just unveiled it to him.
Why?
Before he could pry more, she inclined her head and shifted her gaze.
"What do you feel about this place?" she asked with a reason hidden beneath—a test.
Zephyr frowned slightly.
He did not know what she was looking for, but he decided to be truthful.
"I like it." He looked around, watching the way the Fate Keepers moved, with purpose and seamlessly, as if in a grand design. "Everything is beautiful and alive. The Fate Keepers are...interesting."**
Fate smiled knowingly but said nothing.
Still, the weight of unanswered questions pressed against Zephyr's heart.
"But what is my role here? Why am I here?" He looked at her, trying to find something—clarity, guidance. "What am I meant to do?"
The one question that had been biting away at him since the moment he had arrived. It was not good enough just to exist in this land: there must have been a purpose.
Fate held his eyes, her expression entirely unreadable.
"At this point you are an Enforcer of Fate," she said smoothly. "You will, however, know your true responsibility whenever the time is right."
Zephyr narrowed his eyes.
"When is this time?"
Fate laughed softly and shook her head.
"You will know when the time is right."
Zephyr gritted his jaw. He hated the riddles.
But before he could ask further, something mischievous danced in Fate's golden eyes as she tilted her head.
" Oh, by the way—he has found his fated one."
Zephyr stiffened.
Something deep in his chest lurched as though an invisible thread had been pulled tight.
Who? Who had found their fated one?
Wait-why was she telling him this?
A creeping sense of unease slipped down his spine.
Something was off.
Something was amiss.
The words awakened something deep within his mind-a thought, a memory, a truth that could not be summoned.
His fists clenched.
What had he forgotten!
And more importantly, why?