“You’re finally starting to understand.”
Midnight stood atop his tower of crates, watching Caleb closely. Caleb, for his part, was exhausted and drained, struggling to keep up with this new phase of training. His excitement of the first few days of it had worn off tremendously quickly.
Caleb had started using Time Magic again.
Just like their last attempts, Midnight had instructed Caleb not to hold his breath, among a number of other tips and fundamental techniques for properly entering what he called “Time-state.” Caleb had started to get the hang of it, entering and exiting Time-state quickly and easily within a matter of days. The pressure on his chest, the tightness and difficulty to breathe that Caleb was so familiar with from using Time Magic for so many years, was gone.
Caleb felt free and light. It was almost an amazing feeling.
Almost, because the pressure of Time Magic still weighed down on him. Only now, it targeted him differently.
Every time Caleb entered Time-state, his eyes hurt.
It started as just a tiny bit of pressure, like the onset of a sinus headache. The longer he stayed in Time-state, the more intense it became, and he only ever stayed in Time-state for a period of ten seconds at the most. By the end of ten seconds, his vision was starting to blur, and his head felt like it was going to explode.
“This is way worse than anything from before,” Caleb said with a sigh. “And no, I’m not starting to understand. Understand what?”
“The key to using Time Magic,” Midnight said, hopping down from the crates. For a moment, he was perfectly casual, just standing there. Then, in a flash, he dashed forward, his fist lashing out at Caleb’s face.
Caleb side-stepped the punch, bringing forth a Mobility disc which Midnight had to avoid or else be bounced back into his stack of crates. Midnight smirked. “Good one,” he said. “Your training’s paying off. If you were any slower, I would have broken your jaw.”
“And here I thought you were pulling your punches,” Caleb said, rubbing the spot between his eyes. “So what’s the key to using Time Magic that I’m apparently starting to understand?”
“Short bursts,” Midnight said. “Here with Locational Time Magic, it’s different, but when you’re using it yourself, you dive deep into the flow of time itself. No matter what you do, you continue to dive deeper, until you exit Time-state. Every second, every millisecond, every imperceptible unit of time you remain in Time-state, you go deeper – and the pressure builds. For some, it doesn’t hit them as hard, as quickly, as it does for you. But too long, and everyone succumbs to it.”
“Even you?” Caleb asked.
Midnight nodded. “Even me. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I used Time Magic – excluding the Locational variety, of course – for more than a handful of seconds.”
“I thought the big advantage of slowing down time was that you have more time to think and strategize,” Caleb said. “If I only have a few seconds, doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”
Midnight smiled. “What’s your biggest strength in combat?”
“Mobility.”
“More than that.”
Caleb nodded, remembering what they’d discussed over the past weeks and months. “Controlling the geometry of the battlefield. Choosing who moves, how they move, where they move – both friend and foe.” Midnight gave Caleb a questioning look, the telltale sign for Caleb to go from there to the conclusion his teacher wanted him to reach. “I can move fast… and I can control how others move… so with just a few seconds where I’m faster than everyone else, where time’s slowed but I can move at my normal speed…” Caleb nodded. “I get it. You’re always telling me to think faster, to be able to improvise and react in an instant. If I can do that, then I can dive into the Time-state, quickly make major moves to both myself and others, and then come up for air and have the entire battlefield altered in an instant.”
Midnight snapped his fingers. “You got it. Back in Grimoire you’d use Time Magic as a crutch. It was a way for you to slow down the hectic battles you engaged in so you didn’t have to think fast. That hurt you, but it also worked really well for you until it finally sent you to Chronoshin. I didn’t fully understand your biggest weaknesses until after we fought Neith. That’s why we spent four months just working on your combat skills, not even touching Time Magic.”
“It was supposed to be two months,” Caleb said with a chuckle.
“Shows you how slow you were, Greyson.” Midnight smirked. “But we still have plenty of time. And in those four months, you came an incredibly long way. You’re aware, you’re alert, you’re fast. Considering your Fractured condition, that’s doubly important. Your stamina’s improving, but you’ll never be able to exert yourself for as long as you used to. And the faster you can end fights, the less likely you are to pass out in the middle of them. Now that you’ve become so much stronger as a fighter, Time Magic isn’t a crutch for you. Instead it can be a tool. Apply it strategically, sparingly, creatively. Use it as little as possible for the greatest possible gains. That’s the key: use less for more.”
Caleb nodded. “Use less for more. Is that part of getting to the Steps of Time?”
Midnight chuckled. “I was wondering when you’d start asking about them. That’s part of it, but each of the Steps fundamentally alters how you use Time Magic in a significant way to do some pretty amazing things.” He held up three fingers, ticking them off as he listed each Step. “The Precog Step. The Pendulum Step. And you know the last one: the Phase Step.”
“Are you going to teach them all to me?” Caleb asked, his excitement about Time Magic beginning to return.
“Slowly,” Midnight said. “We’ll do them in order, and we’ll take our time. And we won’t start today. You have more work to do in mastering the fundamentals of Time Magic. But I’ll explain each to you, since you seem so eager. Maybe that’ll put some wind back in your sails – you’ve been a bit grumpy lately.”
“You noticed?” Caleb asked. “Sorry. I just…”
“Your eyes, I know,” Midnight said. “Accept it. They won’t heal beyond the state they’re in now. All you can do is keep wearing those glasses to keep them from getting worse. You’re Fractured. Do your best to minimize it. But don’t fear it.” Caleb nodded. “All right, let me start explaining things.”
“Ooh, are you going to show him the Steps?” Ingrid asked. She’d been inside cleaning, but apparently was finished and now came rushing out from the house to watch them.
“It’s uncanny how you knew exactly what was going to happen,” Midnight said. “But that ties in nicely to the first Step.”
“Precog Step,” Caleb said. “You can see the future?”
Midnight laughed. “Not quite. It’s a bit of fiddling with the currents of time – for brief moments you can, not move forward in time, but get a glimpse ahead. It’s not far, so the Precog Step is mostly useful for combat situations, which suits us just fine. It’s tricky to use, and effectively impossible for me to show you. It’ll be the first one you start to learn.”
“You should really try to explain it better,” Ingrid said, pointing at Caleb. “Can’t you see how confused he looks?”
“Yeah, it’s hard to miss that vacant stare,” Midnight said. “Time is a river. It flows in one direction, and there’s no changing that. You also can’t actually jump ahead, or even speed up the flow. Like we’ve seen, you can slow it down temporarily, in small areas – it’s impossible to slow down time everywhere for everyone, even for the briefest of moments. However, even if you can’t goforward in time, you can see forward. You only get brief glimpses, even at best, but the Precog Step is most useful for preparing you for the other Steps. You can’t just dive into the river of time, casually entering Time-state. You have to enter in just the right way, and you can’t completely submerge yourself for the Precog Step. You keep your head above the water, and you can see, here and there, pieces of the future. Nothing ground-breaking, nothing to help you win the lottery or game the system in any number of ways. It’s for seeing people move, which I’m sure you can understand the usefulness of.”
Caleb nodded. “To see where someone’s going to punch or kick, or what kind of magical attack they’re going to use, and towards whom, before it happens.”
“Just barely before it happens,” Midnight said. “It’s tricky, and situational, but in capable hands it’s a valuable tool in combat. Anyway, on to the –”
“Pendulum Step!” Ingrid exclaimed, raising her hand excitedly. “This one’s my favorite.”
Midnight chuckled. “It’s a fun one to watch, that’s for sure,” he said. “I’ll explain after I demonstrate. Try and watch me, Caleb, and tell me if you can follow my movements.”
Caleb watched carefully, as Midnight started tapping his toe on the ground. It was a steady, slow rhythm, and he kept to it perfectly with every tap. For three, then four, then five measures, he just tapped his foot, and nothing happened.
It was the sixth when things got interesting.
The tapping rhythm suddenly began to reverberate through the air, as if it was coming from all around Caleb. It sounded like the ticking of a giant clock, echoing throughout Midnight Bridge. Midnight’s body became translucent, and then… there were two other Midnights. They were transparent as well, and each seemed to walk out of Midnight’s body in opposite directions, moving to walk a circle around Caleb. Every few feet, a new Midnight appeared, walking with them, until suddenly there were over a dozen transparent Midnights walking in a steady circle around Caleb, their paths overlapping, their translucent forms passing through each other like ghosts. Still, across from Caleb, the first Midnight continued to tap his foot to the same rhythm, his eyes watching Caleb steadily. All around Caleb, thumping in the air, the rhythm continued.
“So?” all of the Midnights asked at once, a dozen of the same voice coming from all directions. “Where am I?”
“There’s only one of you?” Caleb asked.
“Where am I?” the Midnights repeated.
Caleb almost pointed at the toe-tapping Midnight, figuring the one who was different from all the others was where he was. But… that would be too easy, wouldn’t it? He turned around in a circle, carefully watching each of the Midnights. The ones who walked, walked to the rhythm that the first Midnight continued to tap out. Yet they all had slightly different mannerisms. One’s arms swung slightly farther out with each step than the others. One watched Caleb the entire time as he walked a circle around him, which was unnerving.
So where was the actual Midnight? And how did he make all of these images of himself? None of them were completely solid, so how could he tell which one was his teacher?
“If you take too long, I may have to start fighting,” the Midnights said, smiling in a way that did not give Caleb a sense of humor or joy.
“There!” Caleb said, pointing to a Midnight who, until this moment, hadn’t looked at him.
Every single one of the Midnights stopped, all turning to Caleb with an amused smirk.
“Nice try, kid,” came a single voice from directly behind Caleb. He whipped around, but too slow, taking a punch to the gut that dropped him to his knees, doubling over and coughing.
“You didn’t have to hit him!” Ingrid said, glaring at the only Midnight remaining.
Midnight crouched down in front of the recovering Caleb. “Pretty neat trick, huh?” he asked.
Caleb regained his breath and leaned back, sitting on the ground. “How does that work?”
“It’s all about rhythm, as you probably noticed,” Midnight said. “Once you find the right rhythm, you move laterally along the river of time, creating a series of afterimages of yourself. In a way, I was in every single place that you saw me at the same time. But that’s because I was in a different…” Midnight chuckled. “Pardon the pun, but I was in a different ‘time zone’ than you. If you’d tried attacking any image of me you saw, you’d hit only air. But I could hit you just fine from any of those points.”
“That seems remarkably unfair,” Caleb said.
Midnight grinned. “Just wait until you try using it. It isn’t as easy as it looks, and it has its limitations. But we’ll get to that. Let’s talk about the final Step.”
“The Phase Step!” Ingrid said.
“That’s the teleporting one that isn’t teleporting, right?” Caleb asked.
Midnight nodded, standing up. “It is the most difficult – and most dangerous – of the Steps of Time, and the most dangerous usage of Time Magic possible. In the end, you might not be able to use it at all. But I have confidence that you’ll at least be able to use it a tiny bit. Let me explain.” He walked over to his tower of crates, and then around it, until Caleb couldn’t see him. “Are you ready?”
“For what?” Caleb asked.
Midnight suddenly appeared, in a span of time less than an eyeblink, less than a heartbeat, on the other side of the tower of crates, now facing Caleb.
“So how does it work?” Caleb asked.
Midnight took a moment, and Caleb noticed he was out of breath – something that hadn’t happened even during their most intense combat training sessions. “Think about the name. If I’m not teleporting, what am I doing?”
Caleb’s eyes widened. “Oh. Oh, that’s… that’s way cooler than teleporting.” But then his expression was puzzled. “But how does that relate to Time Magic?”
Midnight smirked. “Up until this point, you’ve only known about, and worked with, slowing the river of time around yourself. I can slow the river of time around an area. You now understand that there are ways to peek ahead along the river, and ways to travel laterally across it. But think about manipulating time. What’s one thing that’s always seemed out of reach, and yet seems so obvious when you know the theory of being able to slow time?”
Caleb got it immediately. “Stopping time entirely.”
Midnight snapped his fingers. “That’s it. The Phase Step relies on stopping time entirely. Everything around you is completely frozen for the duration of the Step. That’s why it looks like I’m teleporting – no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be able to perceive the space in which I move, because time is completely stopped until I start it again. And when time is stopped, some really cool things happen. The entire world, the laws you think you know about reality, they warp, change, or disappear entirely.”
“So you can pass through solid objects,” Caleb said. “Phasing through magically locked doors, or even straight down through multiple floors of a maximum security prison. This kind of stuff, it’s… no one can do it. Mages have been looking for ways to pass through solid objects for centuries. Blinking is a popular technique, a short range teleport, but its biggest weakness is that even the smallest physical obstacle can prevent someone from Blinking through it.”
Midnight grinned. “And that’s only the start of it – though everything else that’s fun about the Phase Step are things I can only show you when you’re actually doing it. But these three Steps, alongside the basic fundamentals of Time Magic, should hopefully help you understand just what’s so amazing about Time Magic. It isn’t just slowing down time like you’ve done for years. That’s exciting and cool, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. When you play with time, you start to see that the world itself – physics, space, gravity – only operates the way you understand it when time is moving normally. Once time gets altered, so does the entire world around you.”
Caleb frowned. “But… so what makes the Phase Step so taxing? It’s even rough on you.”
“In order to stop time, well… it’s the one use of Time Magic where you can’t only affect the world around you. When you stop time entirely for all those around you, your body tries to stop with everything else. Moving while using the Phase Step is tremendously taxing, because you’re fighting against a pressure, a state of being, that probably isn’t meant to be fought against. The Phase Step is the one technique in all of Time Magic that, no matter how much you master it, is always dangerous. If I stay in the Phase Step for just a second longer than I should, I’ll not only die, but because of how the world around me has been warped and changed by the stoppage of time, I’ll cease to exist entirely. And my time limit within the Phase Step isn’t constant – it changes dramatically, depending on my physical condition, down to the slightest bit of exertion, the tiniest atom of food or drink I’ve had recently, the number of seconds I’ve slept and the number of seconds I’ve been awake since I last slept… it’s terribly sensitive, and it will be for you, too. Not only that… if you come out of the Phase Step at the wrong time, well. I think you can guess.”
Caleb nodded. It was the danger everyone recognized with the theory of being able to phase through solid objects: what if you get stuck? What if your phasing is a state of being that you turn on and off, and you turn it off while your hand, or foot, or chest, or whatever else is still partway through a wall, floor, or door? Is it stuck there forever? Does it get instantly amputated? Can you phase back out of it, or not? Judging by Midnight’s warning, Caleb guessed the consequences were dire.
“Three Steps,” Midnight said. “You’ll learn them in order, and if you can’t gain sufficient mastery of one, you won’t move on to learn the next. And, should you make it to the Phase Step, I will be watching you very carefully. But since we’re talking about how dangerous Time Magic can be… I’ve been wondering something. Enter Time-state, and then exit it. You don’t have to stay in it long.”
Caleb nodded, turning away from Midnight. It was always hard for him to concentrate when feeling the gaze of his teacher, and he’d had to relearn so much about how to use Time Magic that he needed every ounce of focus he could get.
Before, when Caleb would use Time Magic, he’d unconsciously hold his breath. Midnight explained it to him as Caleb “bracing himself” for it, and Caleb agreed. He’d been bracing himself for the pressure, for the pain.
In other words, he’d been holding himself back. And, hearkening back to Midnight’s lesson to him in the Brig, it was fear that had nearly destroyed him.
He couldn’t be afraid of Time Magic, no matter how dangerous it could be. And the first step, as Midnight had instructed him, was not to brace himself for impact, but instead to walk calmly and confidently into the flow of time. Understanding time as a river, and further understanding what Caleb could and couldn’t do within that river, helped him to visualize what he needed to do. When before he’d feel a sort of constriction, like he was being closed in on from all sides by a mysterious force, now Caleb felt motion. There were currents all around him. In truth, it was one single current, but he could feel it was made up of many, all joining together in the same motion. Some of it was altered, due to Midnight’s Locational Time Magic, and it was those altered currents that Caleb waded into.
But he couldn’t just wade halfway in. He had to submerge himself, be immersed, in order to be able to act upon time itself.
It was a strange sensation. There was no wetness, so the best Caleb could do was describe time’s river as dry water, which sounded absurd and almost impossible to comprehend without experiencing it, and indeed it was. Caleb couldn’t have wrapped his mind around this feeling before entering the river of time properly.
The pressure, of course, did come. Like Midnight said, no matter what Caleb did, he sank deeper into the river with every passing moment. Time, in its totality, was too great a force for any one man to stand against for long. And that was exactly what Time mages did: they stood against time. It was a battle, but to do it properly, Caleb had to do his very best not to make it seem like he was fighting. It took subtle focus, careful concentration, and it was only over the course of months that Caleb came to a point where he was able to move around freely while slowing down time.
He let the pressure build for a few seconds, then came up for air, exiting Time-state.
“Talk to me,” Midnight said. “How did it feel?” Caleb started explaining the “dry water” feeling, but Midnight stopped him. “Go beyond the surface stuff. What did the pressure feel like? How did things feel within yourself? Try and describe the process of the pressure building within you – where it was, how it changed or stayed the same. Don’t leave out a single detail, even if you can’t fully explain it.”
Caleb started talking, very slowly, spending more time thinking than speaking. The pressure focused behind his eyes, but for Midnight that wasn’t enough. Was it more his left eye or right eye? Did it ever shift or morph, rather than just increase in intensity? What about the rest of his body? What about his mind, his thoughts? They went back and forth, slowly and carefully, all the while Ingrid watching and listening, not saying a word as they discussed Caleb’s trip into Time-state. Like many times since coming to learn from Mister Midnight, Caleb found himself thinking about things far more than he ever had before. Not a single stone was left unturned. In time, and with many questions and back-and-forth, as well as Caleb entering and exiting Time-state six more times, Midnight started nodding, as if he’d come to a conclusion.
“I thought your challenges and pain were all because of your Fracturing,” Midnight said. “But now it seems like that’s not the case. There’s still a barrier for you to overcome, and it’s something I should have thought of a lot sooner.”
“Why did it take so long?” Ingrid asked.
Midnight sighed. “I’ve used Time Magic for so long, which has its benefits. I have lifetimes of experience compared to humans, and so much knowledge I don’t always know what to do with it. That’s also the problem. When there are so few other Time mages, I have a small number of students, and they don’t all face the same challenges and struggles… I don’t always realize what’s wrong right away. Your Fracturing is a problem, Caleb, but you can do better with Time Magic. In order to break this last barrier, you and I are diving into the river of time together.” He held out a hand. “Gonna need physical contact for this, kid.”
Caleb took Midnight’s hand. “So… what do we do?” he asked.
“Just don’t let go of me, and do exactly as I tell you the entire time,” Midnight said. He nodded to Ingrid. “We’ll be back soon.”
Ingrid smiled. “Have a nice trip.”
Before Caleb could speak again, the entire world around him changed. Midnight Bridge vanished, Ingrid vanished, the house and tower of crates vanished. The dark, murky sky flowed and rippled with a blue-silver tint, and beams of light shone here and there, vanishing as soon as they appeared as currents washed them away.
“This is the river of time,” Midnight said. His voice was muffled, and yet echoed all around the vast space. Caleb looked down, and realized he wasn’t standing on anything. He was floating in space, and…
He felt like he was floating in dry water. Currents bumped against him playfully. There were sounds all around him, distant and strange, so that Caleb couldn’t make them out properly. Looking around, he could see clearly in five directions – up, down, to either side, and behind him – but he couldn’t see ahead. It wasn’t darkness, there was no wall, it was just…
Nothing.
“How come I don’t feel any pressure?” Caleb asked, his own voice muffled and echo-y like Midnight’s. “This feels the same, but… different.”
“I’m serving as a tether,” Midnight said. “And more than that, do you notice how we can’t actually see or interact with our world? This isn’t the same as using Time Magic, as altering the flow of time. This is time’s own dimension, apart from, but flowing through, the physical world. Or something like that. I’ll be honest, kid, I don’t fully understand this place myself. But notice how we can’t see ahead? We wouldn’t be able to swim ahead faster than the current carries us, either. That’s the simple truth – you can’t jump forward in time. And you’ll discover that, if you try to swim back the way we’ve come, you won’t get anywhere – you’ll continue to be carried forward. That’s the other simple truth: there’s no going back. The big mystery, the big hope of so many people – time travel! Fixing the wrongs of the past! – is a true and complete impossibility.”
“So why are we here?” Caleb asked.
Midnight laughed. “So you’re not one of the millions of sad fools who would give anything to go back in time and fix the past?” Caleb shook his head. “Good. It’s a fruitless dream that gets you nowhere. Feel free to look back… but don’t long to go back. So, why are we here? We’re here to discover what ails you. Raise your right arm.” Caleb did as instructed. It felt strange – like moving underwater, he couldn’t lift his arm as fast as he’d like – but it moved just fine. “Tilt your head back.” Caleb again did as instructed, easily. “Now blink three times.” Caleb did so, and…
“What was that?” he asked.
Midnight chuckled. “Describe what you saw.”
“It was… a silver light. Kind of like a shooting star, I guess.”
“Blink three times again.”
Caleb did again, and again he saw that same brief streak of silver. “It’s in between the second and third blinks. What the heck does it mean?”
“It means you’re going through all of this Time Magic training partially blind,” Midnight said. “Take off your glasses for a second.”
“Doesn’t that hurt my eyes?”
“Not here, and not if it’s only for a little bit.”
Caleb took off his glasses, and was surprised to see the sights didn’t change. Whatever the river of time was, he could see it the same whether he had his special glasses on or not.
“Now,” Midnight said, “reach out your hand as if to scoop some water. It’ll feel weird if you do it right, and it’ll feel like nothing if you do it wrong. Once you do it right, splash that water on your eyes. Don’t you dare close your eyes when you do it, either.”
Caleb grabbed several times, unable to scoop any of the strange dry, invisible water at first. Finally, he got some, and he quickly splashed it in his eyes before he lost his grip on it. Suddenly, there was wetness, and his eyes stung. Somehow, Caleb managed to keep his eyes open until after he’d splashed them. Even after that, he only blinked quickly, not daring to clench them shut or rub them with his hands.
“Take it all in,” Midnight said. “That’s what you were missing.”
“I don’t really understand,” Caleb said, his eyes slowly readjusting as he put his glasses back on. “But if it helps.”
“It should,” Midnight said. “Let’s go back.”
And then the overwhelming, unending river all around them was gone, and they were back on Midnight Bridge. Ingrid came racing out of the house.
“That took forever!” she said, relief evident in her voice. “I knew where you were going, so I knew it would take a while, but that was really something.”
“How much time did we miss here?” Midnight asked.
“Three days, six hours, forty-two minutes, and thirty-three seconds,” Ingrid said, smiling proudly.
Midnight chuckled. “You’re the best assistant I’ve ever had,” he said.
Ingrid was suddenly beaming, her silver eyes glittering with joy. With Ingrid struck speechless by Midnight’s rare compliment, teacher and student discussed what happened.
“Because this area is currently under Locational Time Magic, and we left into the actual river of time, we missed a bit of time here,” Midnight said. “But it’s fine, we’ll make up for it.”
“With even more brutal training, I expect?” Caleb asked.
Midnight grinned. “You know how we do things. Now, first things first: enter Time-state. Come out after ten seconds, no less, and tell me how things are different.”
Caleb did as instructed, and…
Oh. This was different.
Caleb finally felt free and light. He felt like he could do anything. It was amazing!
At first. Each second, a pressure started to slowly build. Caleb could feel it, but… it wasn’t unpleasant, not like he’d always experienced it. It wasn’t focused in his eyes, either, or internally at all, but rather felt like he thought it should – an outside force pressing down on him from all sides. Even as the pressure built, he could move just as well, it just became more and more uncomfortable. After ten seconds, it was rather painful, but not nearly as bad as it had been before his little eye-splashing moment.
Exiting Time-state, Caleb relayed to Midnight what he’d discovered.
“Why is it different, though?” he asked. “What changed, and why did I splash water in my eyes?”
“Normally, when someone uses Time Magic as long as you, they become slowly accepted by the river of time,” Midnight said. “Maybe ‘accepted’ isn’t the right word. But they become accustomed to it, and it to them. The way the pressure felt for you just now – that’s how it’s supposed to be. I was wrong about the eye stuff being your Fracturing. Before, you felt things internally, because you were bracing yourself. You were afraid, and holding yourself back, and the river of time responded accordingly. You were never accepted. And now, as you’re starting to be accepted, for whatever reason your eyes were excluded. So I decided to accelerate the process. We don’t have time to waste, after all.”
“So that’s how using Time Magic is supposed to feel,” Caleb said.
Midnight nodded. “You finally get it,” he said, smiling. “Been a long time coming for you, but you’ve cracked the code. A bit more training, and I’m confident in starting you on the first Step of Time.”
“The Precog Step!” Ingrid exclaimed, no longer speechless.
Caleb smiled, and continued his training in earnest. First his fighting style had been corrected, and now his use of Time Magic.
It had been a long road, but now Caleb was finally, truly, moving forward. For him, this was the turning point he hadn’t even known he’d been waiting for. It had been six months of training since they’d returned from Sunset Square. Halfway done.
Delilah. Shias. Shana. Fae. Mom. Dad. Chelsea. Isabelle.
I’ll be back on track soon. Just wait for me a little longer.
When you see me again, I hope you’ll be impressed by just how much I’ve changed.