Daniel opened his eyes in the scorching heat and blinding sand. He looked ahead of him and saw caravans passing through. He was close to Telsenlore. Perfect. He flew toward the city as fast as he could but didn’t get far before the officials on silver gliders flew up to him, signaling for him to lower and dismount and state his business. Daniel didn’t. Instead, he chanted a spell that blew a blinding galeforce, sending sand rolling through the desert like a tsunami. It pushed back the silver gliders in front of him, sending their riders screaming to the sand. Then he continued on.

The ride took another fifteen minutes until the dunes turned to dry rocks and drifting sand that looked like fog as it blew over the ground, making it both white and red through the transparency. Dozens of caravans were passing through, desperate for water from the aquifer that birthed life in a place it shouldn’t exist. All of it led to Telsenlore, which shimmered in the summer heat like a mirage, surrounded by sandy rock walls fifty feet high to prevent raids between settlements.

Soldiers screamed on the high walls as he approached, setting up a ward and shutting down the city. Daniel chanted a hybrid between a meteor and a rock spell, creating a massive rock of spinning sand and magic. Then he wrapped it in aura as he aimed it at the barrier, shimmering white in the summer heat.

Wait for it… Daniel thought, Wait for it… Now.

He released the attack, sending it crashing into the barrier like a bullet as he flew full speed. If it didn’t drill through, Daniel would hit the barrier doing sixty or faster, breaking the silver glider’s neck. Yet he had faith—

—and it pierced through for two seconds, just long enough for him to pass through.

Mages panicked, launching fire and wind spells into the sky, trying to knock Daniel off his silver glider. They succeeded—after the wall. He plunged two hundred feet down into the city, releasing a wind spell to break his fall. Then he ran into a back alley between two tanned children playing with a ball, searching for a place to turn invisible. He found one.

2

Kyritus shut down his tavern, “Delina’s Oasis,” when he got the news that Sara was arriving—but two patrons forced their way in with threats, making Kyritus fear what she would do. The last time she walked into his tavern and got threatened, she roughed up an entire group of adventurers and broke a table made from a slab of tree. That just stacked worries on top of truly meeting her—and her male enemy. So he paced back and forth, trying to keep sane.

Tiber watched him, sitting on the bar, kicking her legs, eyes following him like a clock’s pendulum for ten minutes until she thrust her hands down and let out a grunt and said, “You’re sooooooooooo annoying!”

Kyritus turned and saw the two patrons stare at him. Then he turned back to Tiber. “Don’t bother the patrons.”

“You’re bothering the patrons,” she said. “Walk, walk, walk, pace, pace, pace. She loves you! Gah. You two are like children.”

Kyritus frowned. He didn’t want to hear that coming from a ten-year-old. “It’s not just that,” he said. “She seems pretty worried.”

Tiber furrowed her brows. “About the man?”

“Yeah. She doesn’t want to worry about it, but….”

“Calm down. She’s gonna be here in like… ten minutes.”

“She’s an hour away.”

Tiber huffed. “So? An hour.”

“Yeah, but a lot can happen in an… what are you doing?”

Tiber jumped off the counter, got a glass, and started pouring a beer into it.

“Stop it,” Kyritus said coldly. “Delina doesn’t drink.”

“So?”

Kyritus sighed. Tiber was a working girl, and it made it easy for him to forget that she was ten—the age where she met adults arguing to do the dishes is met with a huff, saying Why argue? They’re offering to do the dishes. Let them!

He sighed and knelt down to her. “Do you like Delina?”

“Of course I do,” Tiber said.

“And you care about her, right?”

She rolled her eyes. “Uh, yeaaaah. I just said that.”

Kyritus took a deep breath. “Then you gotta support her, okay?”

She crossed her arms. “Jeez! She doesn’t care!”

“She cares. She’ll never admit she cares, but she really does.”

Tiber looked into his earnest eyes. “Really?”

He met her gaze. “Really.”

She looked at the glass of beer and then at him. “It’s a waste. Can we give it to the guys?”

Kyritus’s eyes turned cold, and he shook his head.

Tiber nodded.

The men must’ve heard because one yelled out, “Oi! Barkeep! Give me that drink.”

Kyritus took a deep breath. “We’re closed.”

“The fuck you are.” The man stood up, creating suffocating tension, and mouthed. “The fuck you are,” again.

Kyritus looked at the drink and then the man. Suddenly, the area outside the bar suddenly came alive with yelling soldiers running past with leather armor and heavy steps.

3

Sara rode a kelksan (a desert lizard as tall as a camel but with the general shape of a crocodile) alongside a caravan as the party approached Telsenlore. The massive lizard was very uncomfortable to ride, sporting a bony spine that someone sat on, followed by its wide back and scales. Yet she barely noticed the discomfort as she approached the city.

Something was wrong.

The gates were usually wide open instead of cracked, with six guards walking between wagons to check paperwork and obtain payment in advance, so the flow kept steady, but it was almost gridlocked in the heat with only one guard at the front while guards searched people thoroughly.

“Something happened,” Sara muttered, feeling her muscles flex. She could only imagine the worst—she couldn’t imagine less. It made her want to force herself in—and Raul could tell.

“Don’t do it,” he said.

Sara gripped her kelksan’s reins.

“They’re not valuable if they’re dead,” he said bluntly.

“That’s a bold assertion.”

“How could they be valuable dead?”

“I don’t know,” she said sarcastically, “maybe it’s because I’d cleave Agronus’s legs off and drag him back to that magic circle to restart time again. No big deal.”

Emma gripped her forearms and balled up.

Raul frowned and remained silent. Then they waited, moving up slowly.

4

“Oi! Barkeep! Get us another.” The merchants’ thick Strallan accents were aggressive and slurring.

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Kyritus already gave the extra drink to them—now they wanted more. That was increasing tension by the second. But he got drinks and walked up to them. “Drinks are me—but this’s it. After this, you gotta go.”

One merchant turned to Kyritus with bleary eyes. “Do you wish to disrespect me? Hmmm? On this day. During this meeting? I come here every day. I let you be here. This? This is not yours. Not your country. Not your tavern. You don’t belong, trion.” Trion was the derogatory name for ‘outsider.’ “So if you want to stay here, you’re going to serve these drinks. Got it?”

Kyritus nodded his head a few times, feeling tense down to the marrow of his bones. Something was wrong—he needed to lock down. It made him bold. “Listen to me. I know who you are. I know how influential you are. But I only serve influential people. And if you don’t leave, I’ll let them know.”

The merchant looked into his eyes with contempt. “You’ll tell? Hmmm? Your friends?”

5

Sara reached the front of the gate, sweating in the heat, heart pounding, ready to punch the one guard working in the face. Her mind was going places. She thought of pulling out Qualth and destroying the wall, making her presence known, and sending the guard and his family into poverty. She was so close to Kyritus, yet so far away.

“Papers,” the guard said.

6

Kyritus nodded when the merchant asked if he’d tell his friends. “Yeah.”

The two stared at each other for a few moments. The man suddenly shot up, pulled Kyritus’s arm behind his back, and slammed him on the table.

“Hold him down!” the merchant yelled.

The other shot up.

“Brother!” Tiber screamed.

“Shut up!” The merchant hit Kyritus in the lower back with his elbow, pulling out a knife. “Or you’ll lose your tongue, too!”

Kyritus struggled, kicking, but his back was hurting, and he could barely breathe. The other man was 250 pounds or more, pressing on his back as the other unsheathed his dagger and grabbed Kyritus’s hair.

“You’ll tell? Hmmm? Who?” He slammed Kyritus’s head on the table so he was dizzy and then pried his mouth open while Tiber screamed.

Suddenly, the door burst open, and tyrannical pressure entered the room.

Kyritus’s vision blurred as the dagger clanked to the table, and the knife hit the ground.

“I’m his friend.”

Suddenly, the pressure released, allowing Kyritus to breathe. Then he heard the man get hoisted off the ground and smashed into a table with a wet snap before the body went limp.

Kyritus’s friend wasn’t female.

7

The guard studied Sara’s papers and then looked at her spatial ring—the ring that contained her other spatial rings. His eyes were filled with lust and greed, befitting Telsenlore—the xenophobic town that accepted everyone for a price. “We’re gonna have to go through that.”

Sara took a deep breath. Her ring was locked so he couldn’t get in, but if he could, they’d find her real papers which would need to be validated, as well as searching through rings that had sensitive letters and most importantly—Qualth. So instead, she reached into her pouch, pulled out a golden griffin, and said, “You know what this is, right?”

His eyes widened. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

“No, no you don’t.” Sara shook the coin at him. “This is your reward for not wasting our time. And it’s also your death sentence. Because if you waste my time, you’re losing your job and being sent far, far away from here.”

His eyes turned cold. “No, it’s you that’s mistaken. That’s a bribe—and a bribe’s a crime. You’re handing over all of your rings.”

Sara reached into her spatial ring and pulled out another set of papers—her real identity documents. “When I heard corruption was rampant here, I didn’t believe it. So I came to see it for myself.” She handed him the papers. “You’re fucked.”

8

Kyritus took rapid breaths as he heard the merchant’s friend try to run, only to listen to his voice distort before an explosion and rain of blood followed. Then Kyritus’s “friend” walked to the door with light footsteps that sounded loud before closing the door with a soft squeak.

“Don’t worry,” the man said. “I’ll take care of the bodies.”

Kyritus turned and saw a well-built man with sandy brown hair and gentle brown eyes. Just seeing him made his temples thump and his mind scream. He turned and saw Tiber slinking away, preparing to run. Good girl.

“No need to be shy,” the friend said, turning to her.

“Run!” Kyritus yelled.

The pressure suddenly returned, and the siblings dropped to the ground.

“I’m really sorry about this,” the man said as he grabbed Tiber and brought her over to Kyritus. “Trust me, I really am.”

9

Sara waited as the panicked guard rushed to his superiors, validating the message. He got it. He really did—but it didn’t speed things up. Instead, the superior guard came by, apologized, and said, “Forgive me, Lady Reece. But we’ll need to escort you to the palace. There was an incident earlier, and we cannot let any noble into the streets, let alone a foreign dignitary.”

Sara’s heart thumped. “What type of issue?”

10

Daniel reached into his spatial storage and pulled out ink pens for arrays. Then he looked at Kyritus and Tiber, both sitting down at the table and asked, “Has Sara told you who she is? Who you are?”

Kyritus swallowed and looked at Tiber. Neither of them moved.

Daniel seized Kyritus’s hand. Kyritus tried to resist, but a paralysis disc Daniel put on the table activated, freezing the siblings in place. “Don’t worry,” he said. “This isn’t what you think.”

He started inking.

11

Sara’s mind started unraveling when she heard something break the barrier. “This’s why I need through. I will not let my person get caught up in whatever bullshit you have going on.”

The guard narrowed his eyes. “You seem very panicked that your person’s in danger. Do you know about the man who broke in here?

12

Daniel touched the inside of the outer circle and chanted. Suddenly, the ink in Kyritus’s skin shifted, pulling away and making a perfect circle. “Sara’s from the future,” he said to Kyritus. “And you were going to be her husband.”

Kyritus’s eyes widened.

“I’m not sure which of you proposed,” Daniel said as he inked another circle. “But oh boy, was it difficult to get ‘er to go back to heroing. I had to convince Agronus to mobilize the demon army….” He froze, considering the implications of what he did on a gamble. “It took a lot. But she went anyways….” He inked a few runes and then looked up. “She won, by the way.”

Kyritus’s eyes trembled. “… What?”

“Against Agronus….” Daniel narrowed his eyes. “Or do you not know that’s what she’s here to do.”

Kyritus looked at Tiber and then at the table. Daniel could tell that they knew, but it looked like they didn’t believe it.

“She hasn’t told you anything about her… has she?” Daniel asked. He paused. “I guess that makes sense.” He went back to tattooing. “She doesn’t want to lose you again.” He continued his stories.

13

Sara's body trembled as Raul spoke to the guards. They were mobilizing a force to go to Delina’s Oasis. Everything felt wrong. She needed to go, but she wasn’t so uncivilized as to break into another country and start a diplomatic crisis to appease her anxiety. Yet the last time she was anxious, it proved founded.

Her stomach sank as Raul walked up. “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “And we’re gonna see the Kalif before the trip’s out. There’s no other way.”

Sara nodded a few times, taking deep breaths, thinking about how she was going to murder the entire city if Kyritus and Tiber got hurt. But she waited because that’s what people did. Then, she walked with a large group of guards to Delina's Oasis, heart pounding.

Then she saw the door busted, and her mind snapped, and she opened the door slowly. Kyritus and Tiber were alone—unharmed. Yet something felt wrong.

14

“Delina!” Tiber cried as she ran across the bar. Sara scooped her into her arms by reflex, confused and disoriented.

“Is everything alright?” Sara asked.

Tiber took sharp breaths.

No, things weren’t alright.

Sara gripped Tiber tight, tears running down her cheeks. “I’m here now,” she said. Tiber cried.

Kye waited, sitting on a table in a clean and empty bar, watching with emotional eyes glazed with confusion.

“What happened?” Sara asked when she put Tiber down.

Kye opened his mouth and shut it.

Sara saw the hand that he was trying to cover, and her heart nearly broke on the spot. This was it, the magical reunion between them. The moment after all the time and hardship and letters, love, pain, and killing. It finally happened—and this is how it played out. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

Kye’s eyes filled with panic, and he approached, averting his gaze—but not to express guilt or pain or future rejection. It looked like he was searching for words that wouldn’t come.

He got near, and Raul shut the door, telling the Telsenlore guards to back away, leaving Tiber and Sara and Kyritus to meet for the first real time in half a decade.

Kye stopped in front of Sara and looked into her eyes. “Is it true?”

Sara’s heart sank. “Probably…. What is it?”

Kye chuckled quietly and looked back at the ground and then back into her eyes. He swallowed. “That we were getting married?”

Sara’s stomach knotted up. Everyone knew or suspected she was from the future. The question was what happened—and she never told Kye. It was too painful. But she met his gaze and nodded with tiny movements.

“Yeah.”

Kye smiled and swallowed. “Do you still want that?”

Sara’s eyes trembled. “What?” She put Tiber down, and the girl ran off but not too far, hiding behind the bar and peeking out. Kye waited for her to pretend to disappear to continue:

“I… don’t know how to express that I’m not….” Kye took a deep breath and uncovered his hand. “Let me start over. We’re not dying…. I guess that’s the opposite of what’s happening. Somehow… he linked us to him so you couldn’t kill him. That man… I mean. That’s what he said.”

Sara’s heart swirled with confusion.

“And now,” Kyritus said, “I’m looking at that look in your eyes, and it makes me… sad. Because neither of us blames you….”

“Of course we don’t!” Tiber yelled in the background.

Kye sighed in annoyance, and Sara chuckled, rubbing her eyes. He smiled at that, and he continued. “But I don’t know how to really express that unless I tell you how I feel, and I’m not good at expressing how I feel or… justifying it. And I just… don’t want this to come between us. Just the thought of that makes my heart sink… and I can’t handle it. So… I know this’ll make me a hypocrite after all the shit I gave you, but…. Marry me.”

Sara didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she did both, confused as to what to think. But the more she thought about it, the harder she laughed until Kye was frowning and on the verge of tears.

“What?” he asked.

“You never change.”

“I… don’t understand.”

“The last time…. This is what you did when I went to war with Agronus…. I don’t want you to die without me expressing how I feel….”

Kye laughed, and tears streamed down his cheeks. “And you said yes…?”

Sara shook her head. “I said no.”

Kye froze. “What?”

“No…. I actually said yes,” she clarified quickly but soon hung her head and said. “God I’m bad with words. I said… I wanted to wait until after because getting married first implied I might die.”

“But you won….”

“Yeah, I won.”

Kye nodded a few times and looked at the ground. “So the answer’s still no?”

Sara started crying and shook her head. “No,” she said. He nodded and looked to the floor, accepting the immediate rejection. “The answer’s yes,” she said, repeating herself to make it clear. “The answer’s yes. I want to marry you…. Now. I really want to marry you now.