“Your fervor, Elias, it burns brighter than any Veridian patriot I’ve ever known.”
The words, a familiar refrain, echoed through the gaslamp-lit alleys of Veridia’s underbelly, through the dust-choked camps of the Restoration Front, and across the grimy, treacherous rooftops where Elias Thorne hunted his targets. For decades, it had been his constant companion, flung at him by earnest comrades and cynical allies alike as he crisscrossed the metropolis, chasing the phantom of an independence he no longer believed in.
His answer, each time, a low, guttural growl, remained unchanged.
“Patriotism, my ass.”
To the bewildered faces that stared, questions etched into their soot-stained skin, he offered a single, cutting truth.
‘It isn’t for Veridia. It’s for a ruin, for ghosts. For what I broke.’
Most nodded, a flicker of understanding dawning in their eyes. Some, hardened by the volatile currents of Aetherium-fueled rebellion, mistook it for a deeper, more personal form of loyalty – a vendetta for the collapse of one's own domain, a savage, internalized patriotism. They weren’t entirely wrong, but the truth, raw and festering, was a different beast altogether. He never bothered to explain. It wasn't a story to be told, certainly not one he could claim with pride.
He was the unfilial son, a fool in his gilded youth, banished from the Thorne House for transgressions too numerous and petty to recount. A decade he’d spent, clawing his way through the unforgiving strata of Veridia, the harsh glare of its volatile Aetherium-powered innovations stripping away his arrogance, layer by painful layer. Only then, confronted by the brutal reality of the world, did the full, pathetic scope of his past self crystallize in his mind. But by then, the bitter taste of regret, the crushing weight of remorse, had become his constant diet.
He still saw it, sharp as a fresh blade, the memory of his family’s ancestral manse, engulfed in orange flames against the oppressive grey sky of Veridia, the acrid smoke a permanent scent in his phantom memory. He’d been returning, finally, to beg for forgiveness, a broken man seeking absolution. Instead, he found only ash and ruin. He wept then, silent tears of blood, vowing vengeance against the architects of that inferno. Vengeance for his family. Vengeance for the very chance to seek their forgiveness, stolen by the consuming fire. He couldn't recall, anymore, which came first – the raw, burning need to avenge them, or the deeper, soul-shattering rage for the stolen words. The decades had blurred the lines, leaving only a single, relentless purpose in its wake: to live, to suffer, to regret the past with every gasping breath.
Now, the suffocating pall of that burdensome life began to lift, a strange, creeping certainty of its end settling over him. He lay broken, bleeding out on a forgotten rooftop, the chill of Veridia’s perpetually overcast dawn seeping into his bones. His Aetherium reserves were depleted, his temporal echo ability pushed to its limits, fraying the edges of his mind. He accepted it, a grim, weary peace finally descending. And then, as the last vestiges of warmth threatened to leave his body, something shifted. A wrenching, internal lurch. Not an end, but a violent, impossible beginning.
Memories surged, not just the recent ones, but a full, chaotic cascade. The innocent laughter of a childhood in the opulent Thorne manse. The venomous sting of jealousy, driving him to petty, wicked cruelties. The crushing, cold regret that had settled deep in his core after his banishment, after wandering the hard, indifferent streets. The cataclysmic Aetherium Wars that had ultimately consumed his family, the visceral despair of witnessing their fall from a distance. The decades of brutal atonement, of single-minded revenge. And finally, the bitter satisfaction of his own death – the worst of the bastards had met their due, their essence vaporized by his desperate, unstable Aetherium channeling.
But the profound regret, a phantom ache in his chest even as he bled out, remained. It was a whispered mantra, echoing in the void of his fading consciousness:
“I should have apologized.”
The catastrophe that had consumed his family, a tide of arcane and political machinations, was likely beyond his paltry, youthful power to avert. But the sins he himself had committed, the cruelties he’d inflicted – for those, he should have groveled. Forgiveness should have been sought, earnestly, desperately. And so, with his last, fading wish, a silent prayer escaped his lips. If death truly led to an afterlife, he hoped to find them there. He hoped to meet them as they once were, as *he* once was, so they might recognize him. So he might finally, truly apologize.
***
A searing, blinding agony lanced through Elias’s skull, a familiar, unwelcome guest. It wasn’t the blunt trauma of his recent, fatal rooftop fall, but a different kind of pain, one that felt like pure Aetherium tearing through his synapses. He groaned, a raw sound ripped from his throat, and a dizzying wave of disorientation washed over him. Something was profoundly, terrifyingly *off*.
His eyes, heavy with a fog he couldn't shake, snapped open. Raw Aetherium surged, unbidden, through his limbs, jolting his body upright with a sudden, almost violent spasm. The pain in his head throbbed, a relentless drumbeat against his temples. He clutched his skull, fingers digging into skin that felt strangely smooth, unscarred. The world spun, a blur of opulent textiles and unfamiliar light.
Then, a cacophony of hushed, excited voices erupted around him. “The eldest young master is awake!” someone cried, the words sharp with relief. Another voice, higher pitched, followed instantly, “Inform the household heads! Inform Master Thorne!”
The bewildered clamor spurred Elias to finally lift his gaze, forcing his vision to focus. Faces, a dizzying array of them, swam into view. They were at once intimately familiar, echoing from the forgotten corners of his past, and strangely foreign, devoid of the lines of age and despair he’d come to associate with them. Young. All so impossibly young.
As he stared, dumbstruck, a figure separated from the throng. A brown-haired youth, perhaps only a year or two his junior, approached with swift, anxious steps. His expression, even now, held that same mischievous spark Elias remembered, impossible to erase from memory. This was Kael, his loyal attendant. Kael, who had died some thirty years prior, defending the shattered gates of the Thorne manse, his body broken by Consular Legions. Yet here he stood, concern etched onto an ageless, boyish face.
“Young Master Elias, are you well? Your eyes… they’re open. Can you see this?” Kael’s voice, a flurry of familiar chatter, was almost overwhelming. He thrust a hand, palm up, inches from Elias’s face. Elias blinked, the brown eyes matching Kael’s hair staring blankly at him. His response came, unbidden, from a throat that felt tight, unaccustomed to such youth.
“Kael?”
The attendant’s face brightened, relief washing over his features. “Yes, Young Master! It’s me, Kael. How do you feel? Your eyes… they seem clear! Oh, thank the Aether! I told them you’d be fine!”
Around him, the commotion escalated. “My god, someone call the House Alchemist! They said he’d be fine, but look at him!” A maid’s voice, shrill with panic. Elias grappled with the incomprehensible reality, his mind a tempest of Aetheric static. What in the blighted name of the Aetherium was happening?
His gaze drifted, drawn by an unseen force, to the tall, arched window across the room. The sight beyond was a punch to the gut, a visual echo of a past he’d mourned for decades. Unchanged. Untouched. The sprawling training yard, bustling with young Aether-Guard recruits, their sparring blades flashing under the pale Veridian sun. The majestic, multi-tiered Thorne manse, its spires reaching towards the sky, its Aetherium-laced ramparts glinting in the light. And in the far distance, the familiar, ancient walls of the inner city, glimpses of uniformed Aether-Guard patrolling their battlements.
Everywhere, carved into the polished stone, woven into tapestries, emblazoned on the standards fluttering from the manse’s peaks, was the same emblem. The intricate sigil of the Thorne family: a cogwheel intertwined with a single, stylized thorn. A minor Aetherium House, once proud, once powerful, from the heart of Veridia. An emblem Elias had once worn with an unbearable, arrogant pride, before discarding it in his foolish youth. A sight he had longed for, yearned for, in every waking moment of his cruel, haunted life, now spread before him, utterly unchanged, as if time itself had simply ceased to exist.
The surrounding noise, the frantic ministrations of the attendants, faded into a dull drone. He stared blankly, absorbing every minute detail of the view from the window, his mind refusing to reconcile the reality before his eyes with the agonizing clarity of his temporal echoes.
Then Kael’s voice cut through the haze, louder, sharper with concern. “Young Master? You can see this, can’t you? Oh, by the Aether’s grace, our Young Master Elias! Somebody, please, fetch the House Alchemist! Immediately!”
Kael, his dedicated attendant since childhood, had always possessed a flair for the dramatic, a tendency Elias had once found endearing, then irritating, then desperately missed. But now, it was simply another impossible piece of an impossible puzzle.
“Kael, I must insist on complete rest for now…” another voice, that of a stern-faced senior maid, chimed in, trying to shoo the agitated attendant away. The maids, too, began to fuss, their murmurs and hushed exclamations swirling around Elias. It was all too much. He sat, rigid with confusion, the cold dread beginning to mingle with a fragile, terrifying hope.
The polished oak door to the recovery room creaked open, just a sliver. “B-big brother, are you… are you really okay?”
The voice. That soft, tentative question, a melody from a distant past, ripped through the confusion. Elias’s head snapped towards the sound, his movements sharp, almost violent.
Just beyond the slightly ajar door, a round-cheeked boy, barely past childhood, peered in. His red hair, a vibrant flame, and his eyes, a startling emerald, were strikingly similar to Elias’s own. Lysander. His younger brother. The boy possessed a monstrous, inherent talent for Aetherium manipulation, enough to effortlessly defeat Elias – a nineteen-year-old, a decade into his Aether-Guard induction – within merely three years of holding a training blade. Lysander, the brother he had once envied and despised with a bitterness that still shamed him, whose tragic, brutal end he had regretted with every fiber of his being, longing for forgiveness in his final, miserable years.
“Master Elias! You need rest!” Kael moved with a blur, placing himself firmly in the doorway, blocking Lysander’s entry. “Eldest young master, please lay down!” a maid pleaded, tugging gently at Elias’s arm.
A fresh wave of pain, an echoing resonance from his temporal ability, crashed through Elias’s skull. He clutched his head again, the white-hot agony momentarily eclipsing all else. Kael, frantic, tried to usher Lysander away, his eyes darting between the door and Elias, a panicked expression on his young face. Lysander, small and hesitant, hovered in the hallway, his emerald eyes wide with concern.
Watching the scene unfold, a chilling sense of *déjà vu* washed over Elias, colder and more potent than ever before. The coarse bandages wrapped around his head, the persistent throb of pain beneath them… And Lysander’s youthful face, brimming with innocent worry. The all-too-familiar sensation finally dredged up a torrent of long-buried memories, memories he had actively suppressed for decades.
If this was, truly, reality – if the impossible had occurred – it could only mean one thing:
‘The first time. The first time I officially dueled Lysander.’
That day. The apex of his jealousy, the zenith of his gnawing inadequacy, played out amidst the hushed murmurs of the Aether-Guard and house retainers. He had lashed out, a venomous viper, at Lysander when his younger brother, ever kind, had come to visit him in this very sickroom after the duel. His words, ugly and cruel, still echoed in his mind, sharp as glass shards:
*“Get out! You bastard of a concubine, how dare you…”*
It was merely an extension, a particularly cruel punctuation mark, to the abuse he had heaped upon his younger brother for three long, tormenting years. But those words, spoken in his rage, were the ones that had finally driven Lysander away for good. The boy, who had tolerated every manner of mistreatment up to that point, had finally broken. And in his dying moments, Elias had regretted that specific, scarring incident until his very last breath.
This memory, so vivid, so visceral, only intensified his confusion. ‘Is this another dream, then? Am I dreaming even in death? Besides, this pain… it feels too real for a dream, yet too unreal for life.’ The Aetheric echoes pulsed, distorting the edges of his sanity.
But he couldn’t remain idle, lost in this disorienting maelstrom. ‘Even if it is a dream, especially if it’s a dream, I cannot waste this.’ For decades he had wished for this. Even if it proved to be a cruel delusion, a final, torturous trick of his dying mind, he would seize the opportunity. He would attempt to alleviate the crushing weight of his guilty conscience, even for a phantom forgiveness.
“It’s alright, Kael. Let him in.” His voice, though hoarse, carried an unexpected authority. He pushed himself further upright, ignoring the sharp protest of his head. He looked directly at the small, anxious face framed in the doorway. “Forget it, Kael. Come here, Lysander Thorne.”
At the sound of his full name, spoken with unexpected warmth, Lysander’s expression brightened instantly, the tension melting from his young features. He darted forward, swift as a whisper of Aetherium-wind, and stood beside Elias’s bed, his head bowed, small hands clasped in front of him. “Brother, I’m truly sorry. I should have been more careful… I didn’t mean to…” he mumbled, his apology pouring out in a rush.
Lysander, shorter than his peers, possessed an innocent face and a heart even kinder. Despite the duel being a common, if occasionally painful, incident during Aether-Guard training, the boy was genuinely, deeply saddened by his elder brother’s injury. The sheer foolishness of his past self, who had resented and envied such a pure, gentle soul, was laughable to Elias now, a bitter, hollow sound in his mind.
“It’s fine, Lysander. I’m okay. Stop apologizing.” Elias reached out, his hand, surprisingly steady, coming to rest on Lysander’s shoulder. The confused boy looked up, his emerald eyes wide, brimming with unshed tears. The warmth of his touch, the solid reality of his presence – it was all too real, too tangible. And that reality, fragile as it was, ignited a fierce, desperate need within Elias to say the words he had failed to utter in his previous life.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. Not at all. None of this was your fault.”
He wanted to keep talking, to offer a smile, to reassure this innocent version of his brother. But the memories of what followed that day, sharp as a physical blow, made it impossible. His past self, lashing out with increasing viciousness, growing worse with each passing day, leading inexorably to the incident, *that day*, when he was publicly stripped of his heir status and eventually, mercifully, expelled from the family. The ensuing memories were a poisoned chalice, filled with nothing but the crushing weight of regret, of missed chances and self-inflicted wounds.
And then, unbidden, the past memories – no, the *future* memories, the temporal echoes – surged forth, cold and clear as Aetherium-laced glass.
‘This child. This kind, gentle boy. He died like that.’
Lysander, leading the ravaged Thorne family after their father’s premature death in the brutal early years of the Aetherium Wars, perpetually fighting on the front lines by the rigid decrees of the Veridia Accord. Due to his relentless commitment, the already weakened House Thorne had seen its precious Aetherium reserves and influence steadily drain away. As the last loyal Thorne forces held off the relentless Consular Legions, buying precious time, the opportunistic Arch-Consuls had taken the chance to flee Veridia, abandoning their people. In the brutal aftermath, Lysander had been captured by the victorious Legions, tortured mercilessly, and then publicly executed, a gruesome spectacle to break the spirit of any remaining resistance. Brutally used, horribly misused, he had died a miserable, ignominious death.
‘That. Should. Not. Happen.’
Overwhelmed, a raw wave of emotion crashing over him, Elias’s hands, still resting on Lysander’s shoulders, tightened naturally, pulling the boy into a fierce, desperate embrace. His chin rested on Lysander’s soft hair, the scent of youth and innocence a dizzying balm against his grim, battle-scarred mind.
“I’m sorry, Lysander. Your brother is so sorry.” Words of atonement, unsaid, unheard, for an entire lifetime, now spilled from his lips. Heartfelt regret, an ocean of it, manifested as hot, stinging tears that streamed down Elias’s face, soaking into Lysander’s simple tunic.
“B-big brother? Why are you crying…?” Lysander’s voice was small, bewildered, muffled against Elias’s chest.
“I’m so sorry. I really am. I’m so, so sorry.” Though he had a lifetime of apologies to deliver, a thousand desperate confessions to make, only that single, inadequate phrase kept escaping, a broken record of his boundless regret. The large, imposing figure of Elias Thorne, a man who had seen and done unspeakable things, wept, openly and without shame, his body wracked with shuddering sobs. And Lysander, a mere child compared to the grim man holding him, tentatively patted his back with small, comforting hands.
Time passed, short yet stretching into an eternity, marked by the steady beat of Elias’s aching heart.
“Brother, I’ll come back again soon. I promise.” Lysander’s voice, a soft whisper, finally broke the silence. He pulled away, his face still etched with concern, but a faint, hopeful smile playing on his lips. As he departed, Kael and the other attendants watched in shocked, uncomprehending silence. None had ever seen the eldest Young Master, always so stoic, so proud, so fierce, break down like this.
Elias remained on the bed, the tremor still running through him. He closed his eyes, taking a deep, shuddering breath. If this was not a dream, if this agonizing, beautiful impossibility was truly a return to the past, then his purpose, once born of revenge, now shifted, hardening into something far more potent. A grim resolve, cold and unyielding, settled deep within his core, fusing with the Aetherium that now hummed beneath his skin.
He would change everything. Every single, blighted thing. He would rip apart the threads of fate, even if it tore him to pieces.
He would make them all regret.
***