Episode 17 – "Shards of Yesterday"
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The Glass Pillar Beckons
Dawn never reached this place.
The Glass Pillar towered over the ruins of the City of Evershade, a monument of mirrored obsidian that spiraled endlessly into a sky smeared in amber dusk. It had once been a temple of time—a sanctum where Chronomancers bent the threads of reality to preserve the histories of mankind. Now, it had been claimed by the Hollow Crown and warped into a prison of looping torment.
Zane stood at the edge of the shattered causeway that led toward the pillar's entrance, flanked by Kaela and the stoic Raelion. Behind them, a second team was ready—specially chosen for this mission. These weren't soldiers. They were Remnants—survivors who had once lived in Evershade before it fell.
One of them, a boy no older than fifteen named Deyric, clenched a cracked timepiece against his chest. The clock hands had long since stopped, frozen at the moment the city fell.
> "I remember this place," he whispered. "It sang to us… then it screamed."
Kaela placed a hand on his shoulder. "We'll silence that scream today."
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Inside the Broken Timeline
The moment they stepped inside the Glass Pillar, reality fractured.
The air inside shimmered like melted crystal. Zane felt vertigo grip his gut—he was walking, but also falling. The corridor spiraled upward and downward simultaneously. Reflections in the glass didn't match their movements. In one, he saw himself covered in blood. In another, he was weeping, clutching someone he didn't recognize. In another… he was dead.
> "Don't look into them," Kaela warned. "They show potential timelines. They feed on regret."
Time inside the pillar was a current without direction. Days became minutes. Minutes stretched into centuries. They passed rooms where people danced endlessly, trapped in loops of joy. Others relived their deaths over and over again—willingly.
> "The Crown twisted this place into a Chrono-Labyrinth," Raelion muttered, drawing his blade. "This isn't a test. It's a trap."
Zane nodded grimly. "Then we set it on fire."
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Echoes of Betrayal
In the center of the pillar, beneath the rotating gears of a once-sacred time engine, stood the guardian: Sire Thalen, a man Zane once called friend.
He hadn't aged.
Thalen wore robes of temporal silk, woven from moments lost—his form flickering between past and present. His left hand was gaunt and skeletal; his right, smooth and youthful. His face… was wrong. A cracked mask of who he had been.
> "Zane…" Thalen said, voice like a forgotten lullaby. "You were late. Always late."
Zane froze.
Thalen had died in the siege of Evershade. He'd sacrificed himself to hold the rift long enough for the children to escape. And yet here he stood, whole, speaking, smiling.
> "You should be dead," Zane said flatly.
> "I was. Until the Hollow Crown offered me a chance to fix time… properly. What they showed me, Zane, it was truth. You fight to protect a broken world. I fight to rebuild one."
His staff pulsed with chronos magic—twisting light and shadow around it.
> "Join me, Zane. You don't have to lose anyone ever again."
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Time Fractures and Flames
Zane stepped forward. His voice was steady. Final.
> "If you truly believed that… you wouldn't have betrayed everything we bled for."
Thalen's expression faltered. Then hardened.
> "So be it."
Time exploded.
Chrono-rifts opened throughout the chamber, birthing younger and older versions of Thalen, each wielding variations of his magic. The air filled with temporal storms. Time loops opened beneath Zane's feet. One version of Thalen stabbed—then disappeared, only to reappear above them and cast a stasis field.
> "Kaela! With me!" Zane called, diving into the nearest loop.
Kaela twisted her staff, sending a pulse of anti-chronal energy into the rift. Zane passed through and re-emerged behind one of the younger Thalens, driving his blade through the illusion.
> "Not real," Zane muttered. "Just echoes."
Raelion roared, flames spiraling from his arms like dragons. He hurled a pyro-sigil into the central mechanism, destabilizing the pillar's axis. Gears shattered. Mirrors cracked.
And Thalen screamed—not in pain, but in rage.
> "You unmake everything!" he shouted. "You don't understand what I'm trying to preserve!"
> "Then show me!" Zane shouted back. "Show me what you've seen!"
For a single moment—just one—Thalen lowered his guard.
Kaela stepped forward and cast Soultrace.
The room darkened as a vision enveloped them.
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The Vision of the End
They saw a world drowned in starlight and silence. A realm after the Crown's plan succeeded.
No war. No chaos. But no freedom either.
People walked paths on glowing rails. They smiled, but it was hollow. Their lives, pre-written and perfectly ordered. Peace without pain… and without choice.
> "This is what you're fighting for?" Zane asked, horrified.
> "A perfect world," Thalen whispered. "Without mistakes. Without suffering."
> "Without us."
Zane raised his sword. "You've forgotten what it means to be human."
He struck.
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Fall of the Timelost
The blade pierced the core of Thalen's staff, shattering the timeweave.
All his echoes screamed and faded. The pillar groaned. The walls of the sanctuary fractured like glass under pressure.
Thalen fell to his knees. "I only wanted… to fix it…"
Zane caught him before he hit the ground.
> "So did I," he said. "But we can't fix the future by erasing the present."
Thalen's body aged rapidly—unspooling into dust. With his death, the Glass Pillar collapsed inward, folding into a single second that blinked out of existence.
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Return to the Warpath
The team emerged from the ruins as the sky above flickered—briefly showing cracks of gold.
Two pillars down.
Kaela looked up. "We're disrupting the Crown's grip."
Zane stared at the horizon. "Good. Let it feel what it means to lose."