A heavy quiet settled, thick as dust motes suspended in the workshop's gaslight. Silas stood near a workbench, fingers unconsciously tracing the brass gears of a deconstructed temporal resonator. Kaelen watched him from a splintered crate, a patch of clean linen pressed to his side, the silence stretching taut between them.
His chronal sense, usually a comforting hum of present moment, now registered an unsettling ripple. Kaelen’s earlier words — of Silas’s abilities mirroring a forgotten, feared lineage – resonated, a discordant chime in Silas’s precise world.
Could he apologize? “Forgive my heritage, Knight Kaelen. Forgive the echo of powers that once threatened Aethelburg.” The thought felt absurd. He had no memory of such conflicts, no connection beyond a shared, elemental attunement.
Yet, denying it felt equally disingenuous. This profound connection to causality, this subtle command of kinetic energy, it stemmed from an intrinsic part of him, an ancestral whisper woven into his very being. To claim the power without acknowledging its shadowed past… that felt like taking only the smooth, polished side of a gear while discarding the worn, grinding teeth.
Minutes dragged. The tick-tock of a dozen various clocks seemed to amplify the tension.
Kaelen shifted, wincing slightly. A calloused hand clapped Silas’s shoulder, firm and reassuring. “Don’t look like the weight of an epoch just fell on you, Silas. You weren’t fighting in the Temporal Wars, were you?”
Silas almost pointed out that Kaelen, pale and grim, looked more like the survivor of such a conflict. Instead, he offered a quiet nod.
“Older generations create their own messes,” Kaelen continued, his voice rough. “Young men like us, we shouldn’t be shackled by them. You try to cleanse blood with blood, and the fighting simply grinds on. It’s always the common folk, the quiet lives, who bear the true cost.”
A bitter edge clung to Kaelen’s expression, a ghost of past battles that even his hearty words couldn’t fully dispel.
Silas looked up, a question forming on his lips. “Do you… regret it?”
Kaelen frowned, a furrow deepening between his brows. “Regret what, specifically?”
“Asking me to leave the tower.”
If Silas were to truly embrace his abilities, to hone them beyond his solitary experiments, it would inevitably draw the attention of the Temporal Weavers. They were the shadowy, often misunderstood sect whose inherent command of temporal mechanics had once led to war with the Aethelguard. Their structure, Silas knew, favored those with resonant chronal bloodlines as core members.
This would present a grave risk to the Aethelguard, to Kaelen’s order. A powerful chronal manipulator aligning with the faction his people had fought so fiercely… it could be a devastating blow to the fragile peace.
Yet, Kaelen met his gaze, shaking his head. “Silas, I trust your character. The care you showed for an unknown, wounded knight, revealing a part of yourself you’d kept hidden, just to mend me. If a man like you, with your insight and meticulous mind, were to join the Temporal Weavers, and even rise to prominence, perhaps… perhaps you could prevent another brutal clash from ever unfolding.”
Silas felt a flush creep up his neck. Kaelen, he thought, was overestimating him by a temporal mile. His motivations had been far simpler. He had tended Kaelen’s wounds because his internal clockwork abhorred disorder and injury, and because Kaelen’s presence offered a rare, intelligent conversation. He’d revealed his abilities not out of grand purpose, but from a pragmatic need to stop an immediate threat to the knight’s life. If Kaelen had been cold or hostile, Silas likely wouldn’t have spared a second thought for his fate.
Lost in these thoughts, Silas fixed his gaze on a loose floorboard. Kaelen, reading the quiet deliberation, offered a small smile. “No need to ponder such weighty futures now. You haven’t even decided to seek out the Weavers, have you?”
“No, not yet,” Silas admitted. He imagined exploring the under-city, the sky-bridges, perhaps even the distant aetheric plains Kaelen described. That appealed more than anchoring himself to any single faction. The whispers of the Temporal Weavers carried a vague, unsettling hum he didn’t quite trust.
“At any rate,” Silas added, pushing a small spring back into its housing. “I intend to remain here until your wounds are fully mended.”
“Wounds? Calling them that makes them sound like more than simple scrapes!” Kaelen laughed, a booming sound that momentarily banished the workshop’s solemnity.
---
Days later, while Kaelen’s injuries continued their slow, biological mend, Silas decided to learn more formally about his own abilities. He had wielded them instinctively, a natural extension of his will, but lacked any theoretical framework.
“Chronal resonance, or the Aetheric Arts, is often called the ‘Key to All Mechanisms’,” Kaelen began, gesturing with a hand still stiff from injury.
“The Key to All Mechanisms,” Silas repeated, the phrase feeling right, fitting the intricate clockwork of his mind.
“But it’s not truly omnipotent, as the name might imply. To bring about grand effects, it requires a proportional expenditure of chronal energy. You’ve certainly experienced that drain yourself.”
Silas nodded. He remembered the bone-deep weariness after pushing the wraith back, absorbing its essence. “What determines that proportionate energy cost?” This question had often plagued him, a variable in his internal equations.
Kaelen cleared his throat, then held up three fingers. “The difficulty of any chronal manipulation is determined by three core factors. First, your innate attunement. Second, practical mastery. Third, causal alignment.”
Innate attunement, practical mastery, causal alignment. Silas engraved the words onto a mental slate, already dissecting their implications.
“The first, innate attunement, is simply the intrinsic connection your very bloodline has to certain chronal mechanisms. It’s why Aether-weavers, those with the Lavitas lineage, can mend bone and flesh with such ease. For instance… you would find it exceedingly difficult to heal my injuries, wouldn’t you?”
“True,” Silas confirmed. He could accelerate a cell’s repair, nudge kinetic energy to aid circulation, but genuine healing felt like trying to mend a broken gear by simply willing it whole.
“A true Aether-weaver from the western plains can close grievous wounds without special training. Those with profound gifts can even reattach severed limbs, eradicate illness. Conversely, for someone with a different attunement, no matter how much they focus, such feats are nearly impossible. That is innate attunement.”
A fleeting, sharp pang struck Silas. He thought of his mother, her slow decline. If his attunement had been to healing, not to the relentless march of time and kinetic force… But the thought was useless, a temporal deviation he couldn’t mend. He pressed his lips together, releasing the old regret.
“Then, what does the second factor, practical mastery, mean?”
“Another way to describe it is proficiency,” Kaelen explained. “It means a chronal adept finds it simpler to perform manipulations they are familiar with, or skilled in. A Weaver who often works with heavy lifting in the docks might find it easier to manipulate gravitational fields, or accelerate objects. Someone who spends their days in intricate clockwork, like yourself, might find delicate temporal adjustments easier.”
“Does my habit of compressing kinetic energy and projecting it like a physical impact, like when I struck the wraith, fall into this category?”
“Astute. Precisely,” Kaelen affirmed, a flicker of admiration in his eyes. “Had you simply tried to generate a raw kinetic shockwave in a typical manner, it wouldn’t have carried that focused speed and power.”
Silas’s past experiences suddenly clicked into place, making Kaelen’s words feel less like theory and more like the fundamental laws of his own existence.
Kaelen, smiling like a satisfied mentor, then furrowed his brow. “The third, and arguably most crucial factor, is causal alignment. It’s also the most complex. In truth, even I don’t fully grasp its depths. Simply put, more ‘natural’ events manifest with less effort.”
Kaelen stroked his chin, pondering how to articulate the concept. “What do you think would happen if you expended chronal energy, attempting to simply end my life?”
“Perhaps… your internal chronal rhythms would merely stutter for an instant, then snap back.” Silas envisioned the resistance he’d felt when attempting to manipulate the wraith directly, without a focused cause.
“Exactly. That is a lack of causal alignment. It occurs when there’s no proper cause for the desired outcome, or when the task itself is excessively difficult, an unnatural temporal disruption. In your hypothetical, both factors would apply.”
“I believe I understand what you mean by cause,” Silas offered.
“Elaborate.”
“If I wished to end your life, it wouldn’t be enough to expend chronal energy and vaguely ‘will’ your death. I would need to provide a cause. Like accelerating the kinetic energy of a falling beam to strike you, or initiating rapid cellular decay. Creating and guiding a direct, physical cause is considered more ‘natural’ than simply willing a biological process to cease.”
This insight stemmed from Silas’s recent combat. He’d needed to create kinetic projectiles, not just directly halt the wraith’s movements.
Kaelen clapped his hands, a genuine smile spreading across his face. “Brilliant, Silas. You have the mind of an Aetheric Scholar. Your comprehension is exceptional. As you’ve stated, forming a proper cause can drastically reduce the chronal energy consumption.”
“Yet, I can freely accelerate the decay of pests or minor clockwork mechanisms. But more potent entities, like the wraith, required this intricate approach. Why?” Silas asked, thinking of the resistance he’d met.
“Creatures with their own significant aetheric presence develop a natural resistance to raw chronal manipulation,” Kaelen explained. “Their intrinsic resonance deflects casual effects. However, if you apply an already completed, physically manifested manipulation – such as your kinetic projectile – you bypass much of that resistance. Of course, if the disparity in inherent power is too great, even that might fail, but that’s another matter.” Kaelen revealed this was also why Silas’s focused kinetic impact had shattered the wraith, while Kaelen’s direct, un-causal spells had been nearly ineffective against its reanimated form.
Directly influencing a powerful chronal adept, Silas understood, was almost impossible without a physical vector.
Listening to the detailed explanation, a dull ache started behind Silas’s eyes. He pressed his thumbs to his temples.
“The Aetheric Arts are far from simple, are they?” he murmured.
“A grand Weaver isn’t merely someone with immense power. Understanding the principles, knowing your limitations, and skillfully utilizing your surroundings are all equally vital,” Kaelen replied.
Silas closed his eyes, reviewing the lessons. One question remained, a quiet hum on the edge of his perception.
“My innate attunement… do the Temporal Weavers possess any specific capabilities related to my kind of chronal manipulation?”
Kaelen had previously mentioned their heightened perception, their ability to trace chronal echoes. But these weren’t direct manipulations.
Kaelen nodded. “Indeed. Weavers excel in temporal obfuscation and chronal tracing. Have you ever attempted such a thing?”
“I’ve used tracing a few times. Never obfuscation.” Silas had sometimes used chronal tracing to track faint temporal ripples, verifying Kaelen’s presence in the tower. He’d also used it to detect faulty mechanisms in complex clockworks, following the causal chain of their failure.
Obfuscation, however, held no purpose in his isolated workshop.
“Try it now,” Kaelen urged. “Many lesser adepts can achieve basic temporal blurring – a distortion of light and sound. But the highest level of obfuscation, where one becomes utterly imperceptible, erasing their presence from the causal flow itself, that is an ability exclusive to the most potent Weavers.”
Silas focused. A spark of chronal energy ignited within him. _I wish to be unseen. Unheard. My presence, a ghost in the causal stream…_
The chronal energy within him began to drain, a rapid, insistent pull. He looked down at his hands, his form. Nothing appeared different. He still saw himself, solid and present.
“Did it… work?” he whispered, a slight tremor in his voice.
Kaelen stared blankly, eyes unfocused, fixed on the empty space where Silas had stood. “It worked, Silas. I cannot see you. Are you still there?”
Silas took a step, then another, circling the room. He stomped a boot lightly, snapped his fingers. Kaelen’s gaze remained fixed, unseeing, unhearing. A shiver, not of cold, ran down Silas’s spine. He felt… absent. His perception of himself was intact, but to Kaelen, he was a void.
He released the drain on his chronal energy. Instantly, Kaelen’s eyes sharpened, his gaze snapping to Silas’s form, a stark contrast to the blankness of moments before.
Kaelen let out a deep, shuddering sigh, tension easing from his shoulders. “It’s been an age since I witnessed that ability. Still as terrifying as the legends. During the Temporal Wars, the Aethelguard knights prayed morning would always come. But too often, dawn would find barracks full of men, their throats slit, with no whisper of a perpetrator.”
“This… this seems an unfair power,” Silas murmured, the weight of its implications settling heavily.
Such a chilling manipulation, far beyond the mending power he’d once wished for. How could anyone fight a foe they couldn’t even perceive, whose very presence was unwound from causality?
Kaelen shook his head, a grim set to his jaw. “It is not invincible, Silas. By no means.”