Just when Jair finally began to get a handle on the pieces of himself, manabody beginning to settle, physical body no longer screaming, the world lurched again.

The timeline tumbled by in a flash, vague imprints of the past minutes disappearing almost before he had time to register them, and then all his progress was undone as his younger self again tried to reject everything that he had become.

He pulled everything together more quickly this time, no longer flailing off guard, and within ten minutes he had his composure returned to equilibrium. The soulspell remained exactly the same degree of broken; it hadn’t drawn itself back together, nor fallen further apart.

Repairing a soulspell was a years-long undertaking. He’d be stuck in this timeline for the foreseeable future.

Or… some uncontrolled variation of this timeline. Judging from the way he’d been reverted a second time in quick succession, he was unlikely to have a single stable timeline. Whatever was going on, it was so far outside of the norm that he still wasn’t at all certain of what happened.

The implications of losing Temporal Reversion required several long moments to process.

Last time he’d been trapped in a timeline without his soulspell, he’d spent the years of recovery laying low and avoiding danger at any cost. He stayed well out of the way of grander events, hidden from anything that might harm him, withdrawing from the affairs of the world even as the moons went dark and the coastal frontlines collapsed, until he finally reclaimed his power and escaped that dark and desolate future.

This was different. The soulspell was clearly still activating, just not within his control. But there was nothing he could do about that right now.

His thoughts more or less settled, he relaxed gradually into the reality of where and when he was, scanning the area to get a better sense of what was going on.

He sat in the audience at a familiar initiation ceremony. Not his own, this time, but it took only a quick check to verify his suspicion.

Ran Serin stood tense and wide-eyed among those who’d just received their class, clutching his new soulsword tight to his chest. His eyes met Jair’s and for a long moment they stared at one another unblinking.

Everything about this felt wrong. Ran was confident. He shouldn’t be standing like a rabbit in the gaze of a predator, shouldn’t be displaying such blatant uncertainty.

Jair scanned the audience for Ajriol, finding Ran’s father easily two rows back. The look of concern on his face proved that Jair wasn’t imagining things. This wasn’t normal behavior, and he wasn’t the only one to notice.

But there was nothing to be done but sit through the whole ceremony, worry and speculation tugging in a dozen directions at once, until it finally came to an end.

As soon as he could do so without causing a scene, Jair jumped to his feet and raced to Ran’s side, Ajriol following at a more sedate and respectable pace.

“What is going on,” Ran asked immediately, gripping Jair’s arm with almost desperate force, not quite managing to conceal the tremor in his voice. “Because this is not what I signed up for.”

“It’s okay. Breathe. Talk me through what happened. Describe it for me.”

“I… just sliding, uncontrolled, like when you try to stop too suddenly on loose sand, but it goes on and on and there’s no way to catch yourself.” Ran shivered and looked around at the crowd, as though seeing it with new eyes; as though not seeing it at all. “I always thought this place was safe, secure. That nothing would…”

Abruptly he released Jair and dropped right there, breathing hard, hunched with his arms held tight around himself.

“You always hear ‘don’t consort with criminals, don’t transit during Dark Night, don’t walk down suspicious streets alone’, but I never thought… it doesn’t feel… things like this happen to other people, not just… spring on you like this. The dragon was bad enough, but this–?"

“It’ll be okay, I’m still here. We can figure this out.”

“It’s… this is... everything feels wrong.” Ran’s arms tightened, clutching his knees to his chest, eyes flashing white, then pink, then gold–

They tumbled through the timeline, which at least explained what was happening, but raised so many more questions.

This time, now he was paying attention, Jair could see the shadow of Ran on the other side of the temporal landscape, as though seen through smoky glass.

The timeline had begun to fill in now that they'd lived through the events post-soulspell unlock, allowing him to see the shape of the initiation ceremony and everything that had come after, but it still eluded his grasp as he tried to pull himself out of temporal freefall. Ghostly, insubstantial, untouchable.

Had Ran somehow usurped control of Jair’s soulspell? Was that why they ended up back here at Ran’s unlocking ceremony instead of Jair’s? But if it were Ran’s power now, why had Jair come back with him?

Why had this happened? How did this happen?

Too many questions, none of which they could answer right now.

Then they landed again at the beginning, and Jair's body and soul promptly tried to tear him apart.

Not this again. Jair gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, and pulled himself back together. Maelstrom, packed up and stored away. Manabody, no longer flying in a thousand directions formlessly. Soulspell, still exactly the same level of broken, neither better nor worse.

Once he’d collected himself, he became aware of the ongoing commotion.

Ran had barely touched the hilt of his soulsword before he collapsed, fainted dead away in the center of the stage.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The ceremony interrupted, there was much shouting, Larenok made blustering threats, Notek came running to see if Ran was healthy or needed healing, parents’ voices raised in concern, students awaiting their own initiation grumbling impatiently…

By the end of the whole affair, they ended up back in the recovery ward, Ran taking the seat of honor in the recovery bed and Jair the one sitting at his side.

Maelstrom’s soul remained exactly as it had been, but Jair still needed to find its physical form to reunite the two. Right now it bounced around in Jair’s soul with growing agitation, unhappy with being split from its body.

Soon, he silently promised his sword.

Ran finally roused some hours later, immediately flinching back with a start, clutching the blankets to his chest, hyperventilating already.

“It’s okay, you’re safe here.” Jair took his hand. "Breathe. It's okay. I'm here. We'll get through this."

Ran's eyes flashed white, and Jair gripped his hand tighter. "No, don't do that. Stay here. Stay with me. Don't try to run away. If you try to escape, it'll just start over again. Stay with me. Right here. Focus on me. It's okay. You're right here with me. I'm right here with you."

Ran's breathing still came sharp and unsteady, but his eyes relaxed from their activation glow.

Jair released a breath of his own, relaxing his grip just a bit. Ran gripped him back, staring up at him with the look of someone trapped and stunned. "This isn't what I wanted."

"I know. It's not what I wanted either. But it's what we have to work with. No refunds, no replacements. That's how life is."

“You killed them.” Ran shook his head, as though disbelieving. "Just like that, like nothing, like… I can't do this. I'm not-- I can't--"

“Do you want me to go?”

“No! I don't want to do this, but I definitely don’t want to do this alone."

"There's no need for you to. You can suppress your soulspell. Most people do. Not everyone even knows theirs, let alone uses it."

"But it's so much. So powerful. I can feel it, the potential... dozens of times over what I already took, there's so much space, empty space, just waiting--"

"Ssshhh, it's okay, slow down. You can rest, or you can talk, no need to rush."

Ran huffed out an unsteady laugh. "Is this how you feel all the time? Like your soul is coming apart and screaming?"

"No. It'll pass. That's just because of the activation type. Yours attuned in an instant due to trauma. The soulspell itself is reacting to the events that pushed you into the attunement, echoing the moment. It'll pass."

Ran's grip relaxed slightly. "Good," he breathed, then passed out again.

Jair hadn’t ever imagined he would see this process from the outside. Now, he dredged up long-buried memories. The pure chaos of the early days, months, years, decades, the centuries he'd spent at Astralla, locked in these first months. Unable to move forward without accidentally triggering his soulspell sooner or later, not knowing how to catch himself or prevent a full reversion every time. The despair, the unimaginable emptiness of being trapped without any way forward or back...

Jair’s fists tightened in his lap. He wouldn't let Ran go through the same thing. He'd see to it that his friend's introduction to time travel would be smoother. Calmer. More regulated.

After all, Jair had needed to figure his soulspell out on his own from day one. Ran had him. Someone who already knew what it was like.

Wise mentor.

Not something Jair had ever imagined himself claiming as a title.

Ran finally woke again, hours later, and Jair was still sitting there, still watching him sleep, still quiet and contemplative.

"I don't like this," Ran said immediately, but quietly. Wearily. "It's been less than a day and I'm already losing my mind."

"No worries. You can lose it for a bit, I'll find it for you again."

Ran laughed, obligatory, the words coming slow and halting. "I think I know what you meant, now. About my being an anchor. I didn't understand."

"I wish you didn't have to."

"You don't have to stay."

Jair punched him lightly in the shoulder. "Idiot. Of course I'm staying. As long as you could possibly want me. Who else can teach you the ins and outs of timeline diving?"

"I guess I am stuck with you, aren't I?" Ran made the obligatory joke with numbness in his tone.

Jair grinned, his own mood equally subdued, but just as determined not to show it. "What a shame. We'll have to throw a party for the rest of the world, so they know what they're missing out on."

They spent the next several loops in similar fashion: Ran alternating between resting and hyperactively demanding answers, Jair trying to explain centuries worth of accumulated understanding of his soulspell as briefly as possible, and Temporal Reversion accidentally getting triggered and throwing them back to the beginning.

They made it through the day on the eighth try.

Jair got very good at pulling his manabody back together. His soulspell never changed, equally broken, but he didn’t expect it to.

His physical body gradually acclimated, rejecting him less and less forcefully. Or perhaps his soul was reshaping itself into the proper form to fit into this body. Either way, the transition became easier each time.

Apart from Maelstrom. The soulsword only grew more agitated the longer they went on without giving it its body back, even across timelines, so he was starting to worry on that score.

“Soulblade, manifest,” he whispered, pressing two fingers to his forehead, but though he could feel Maelstrom surging eagerly in his soul there was nothing physical for it to manifest. Until he could reunite it with its blade form, it would remain trapped in his soul. And very unhappy about that fact.

Ran gradually recovered from the initial shock; after the second time he didn’t cause any sort of scene at the initiation ceremony, and he grew more and more like his old self with each reversion.

Jair explained as much about the triggers of Temporal Reversion as he could, speeding up the process significantly, but some parts could only be learned by feel.

By the sixth time he was no longer randomly activating the ability involuntarily; the last two were for testing purposes.

Ran's interpretation of the spell was different from Jair's own, a slippery dune instead of the clifflike timeline Jair tumbled down. Ran’s handholds were also made of prickly cactus instead of crumbly stone, which made things more difficult. Having the timeline actively try to hurt you if you did anything but slide all the way to the beginning was going to be a problem.

"So, we've got two months until the dragon, what do you want to do with them?" Jair asked.

Though it was officially past midnight, neither of them was tired enough to want to sleep. The thrill of discovery kept them both fully engaged with testing the boundaries of Ran’s new power.

“Get my spells imprinted, reforge my sword, and fill my soulspell,” Ran answered at once.

“Not go recruiting mercenaries? Not hire a team to hunt it to its lair and kill it before it ever comes for you? We have time now, access to other continents and further distant cities.”

Ran waved a hand, dismissing the notion. “Sure, we can do all that. I’m not too concerned about the dragon, at present. The way today has gone, we’ll have years until we have to think about it.”

“True enough. So, when you say you want to ‘fill’ your soulspell…” Jair lowered his voice, though they were alone in their apartment. “Care to divulge the details?”

"It’s called Soul Echo, and… I think I can store forty soulspells," Ran admitted a bit sheepishly.

“Forty?”

"Well. Thirty-eight now. I don't know how that's possible. Even storing two seems like a completely unfair cheat."

"Don't question it. I've been reversing the entire universe for centuries."

"And now I can do that, as well as knock you out when you're being annoying."

"Don't you dare."

Ran’s only response was a sinister smile.

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