Kael hated mornings.
Not because he needed sleep—he'd long since mastered the art of staying alert on nothing but paranoia—but because mornings were loud. Especially when shared with seventy-four other adolescent would-be heroes, all shouting, swinging swords, and pretending they had something to prove.
He leaned on a wooden post at the edge of the sparring yard, arms crossed. Around him, the recruits hacked away at practice dummies, tripped over each other, or yelled about honor and glory.
Thorne was still trying to hold his sword right.
"You're putting all your weight in your wrists," Kael called out lazily. "You'll snap your fingers before your blade connects."
Thorne paused mid-swing. "I'm trying, okay?"
"Try smarter."
Thorne groaned but adjusted his stance. He wasn't hopeless—just undisciplined. Raw strength, quick feet, and a lot of heart. That was fine. Kael could work with that. In fact, he'd need to.
Kael had remembered something in his dreams last night. A battle, years from now—or years ago, depending on the time—where a boy with Thorne's laugh died too soon. Stabbed in the back during a siege, never knowing why the city fell.
This time, Kael would make sure Thorne lived. Maybe even learned.
"Again," Kael barked. "Slower. Feel the weight shift."
Thorne exhaled and swung again. Better. Not good. But better.
From across the yard, Instructor Merek eyed them with interest. The man was one of the few Kael respected. A decorated veteran who didn't care about noble blood or name. Only talent. And Kael had talent to spare.
Too much talent, if he wasn't careful.
That's why he still held back.
Kael trained like a promising farm boy with lucky instincts—not like the war-hardened tactician he used to be. Not like the man who'd died storming the Silver Bastion. He didn't need attention. Not yet.
Let Alric preen in the capital. Let the other prodigies play duels and drama.
Kael was building something deeper.
Later, in the dormitory hall, Kael sat on the floor with Thorne, going over tactics with sticks and bits of bread.
"You can't just charge into the front lines," Kael said. "That's what they want you to do."
"But I'm strong," Thorne argued.
Kael pointed to the crust that represented their opponent. "So is the man with the crossbow two rooftops away. Doesn't matter how strong you are when the bolt finds your throat."
Thorne frowned. "You talk like you've seen it happen."
Kael hesitated. Too long.
"Just read a lot," he lied. "Old war journals. They're full of lessons."
Thorne tilted his head. "You're weird, Kael."
"I've been called worse."
There was a beat of silence before Thorne grinned. "You kind of talk like an old man."
Kael didn't respond.
If only he knew.
That evening, while most of the recruits crowded the mess hall for burnt stew and spiced wine, Kael snuck off toward the tower archives. He'd bribed a sleepy scribe with a good chunk of coin and a forged permit. It wasn't the first time.
The door creaked open.
Inside, shelves groaned under the weight of forbidden texts and dust-choked tomes. Magic hummed faintly in the air, protective runes glimmering like spiderwebs across the ceiling.
Kael made straight for the scroll he'd hidden earlier—an old piece written in Drathic script, likely missed by the Academy's stricter censors. The name on the edge made his heart thud: The Blade That Cuts Time.
It was incomplete. Missing context, annotations, entire passages. But even a fragment was better than nothing. He needed to know how it had all begun—the first Chrono Blade, the first shatter, the first choice that splintered the timeline.
Because Kael hadn't come back just to survive.
He had come back to change everything.
The next morning, a bell rang across the northern yard. Sparring matches. Rotational.
Kael groaned internally.
He stepped into the ring only to be greeted by a familiar sneer.
"Kael," said Lorian Hargrave, his opponent—second son of a disgraced baron, desperate to prove he wasn't a footnote. "Finally. I've been waiting to knock the smug off your face."
Kael grinned. "I'm flattered."
"Don't be. You'll be eating dirt in two minutes."
Kael raised his practice sword lazily. "Make it one. I'm in a hurry."
The match began with a roar from the crowd. Kael didn't dodge the first blow; he let it come, parried gently, then twisted his stance and let momentum do the rest. Lorian stumbled.
Kael stepped past him and tapped the man's side with the wooden blade.
"Point."
They reset. Lorian came back harder, angrier. This time Kael disarmed him mid-swing and caught the weapon in his left hand.
Gasps from the watching students. Lorian's face turned the color of boiled crab.
Kael dropped the sword in front of him and bowed. "Next time, lead with your footwork, not your mouth."
Lorian lunged—not for a strike, but a dirty tackle.
Kael sidestepped smoothly, stuck out one leg, and let gravity humiliate the rest.
Lorian ate dirt.
The yard erupted in half-laughter, half-shock.
Instructor Merek, arms crossed, said nothing. But Kael saw the flicker of approval in his eyes.
That night, Thorne asked the question Kael had been expecting.
"Where'd you learn to fight like that?"
Kael didn't look up from his candle. "Trial. Error. Mostly error."
"You're hiding something."
Kael finally looked up, and his expression was steel. "Yes."
Thorne blinked.
Kael stood. "If you keep following me, you'll end up seeing things you won't understand. You'll want answers I can't give. Not yet."
Thorne stared. "But I trust you."
Kael exhaled. The words hit him harder than they should have.
"Then keep training," he said quietly. "You'll need it."
Somewhere, deep beneath the Academy, in a chamber forgotten by history, a sliver of time shimmered and snapped.
A blade was waking up and it remembered Kael