Edico’s funeral pyre flickered hot, licking Sara’s skin as she greeted nobles as a politician and heroes as a friend. In the midst of it, Raul walked up to her wearing a dark expression, axe draped across his back.

“What is… is that?” she asked.

“I think so….” Raul took the axe off his back and handed it to her.

“Yeah,” Sara said, “this’s it. This is Halkon’s Executioner.”

“Where’d it come…” Raul stopped because he already knew the answer. “Why?”

“Because he wants us to win.”

Raul frowned. “But if he gets his way—we’re all gonna die.”

“I think…” Sara took a deep breath. “I think that there’s more to this soul link than it seems like… and he plans to cripple or torture them to make me follow through.”

“And go back together again?”

“Yeah. Not willingly, of course. I’m sure he wants to keep me out of it, but if we do get sent back, he’d get his chance. He could… call the cops on me. Kill me. Take my parents hostage. Show up like nothing happened and then try to kill me after the summoning. Anything but… this. A world where he killed Edico and… is the villain.”

Raul took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Then he lifted the axe. “Is it good, then?”

Sara picked it up and examined it. “We’ll have it checked out. I’d think it was impossible for someone to modify Halkon’s work, but…” She sighed.

“Yeah,” Raul said.

“Get some rest,” Sara said.

“You, too.”

“I’ll try.”

“I think you will.”

Sara’s eyes opened wide, and she looked at Kye. “I think I will.” Now that she had Kye, she could dream again—just like she used to.

2

Sara fell asleep within three minutes of returning to her and Kye’s room. She slept well.

3

Sara stood before the heroes the next morning with a sharp glint in her eyes, waiting for absolute silence—until they were holding their breaths. Then she spoke:

“Daniel is a traitor,” she said, ”and it goes far beyond what he did to Edico.”

Darius gripped his fist, and Helen brushed her hand against Andy’s. Raul and Emma stood together, preparing for her words.

“We don’t know where he is right now, but we believe he’s in Drantal, makin’ a deal with Agronus,” Sara said. “You’re probably wondering why, so I’ll be honest with you: Daniel wants to turn back time.”

A wave of negative synesthesia spread between the heroes as she met their gaze.

“I have reason to believe that Daniel turned back time—and I got caught up in it. That should answer many of your questions about who I am—and help you understand the stakes involved. If he succeeds, you will all… cease to exist. Trust me… it’s worse than death… because it’s like you never existed…. Your relationships…” Sara looked at Raul and Emma, Andy and Helen—Darius and Tara, “will cease to exist.”

The couples’ body language sent a powerful message to the others.

“Listen to me,” Sara said. “I’ve gone through that before… and I can’t do it again. There are things important in this life… that go beyond power, prestige, and success…. Things like relationships…. Love. Trust….” She swallowed. “Memories.”

Raul and Emma shifted uneasily, and the others glanced between each other.

“And I can’t lose those things again. And neither can you. So if we fuck this up… and Daniel wins… that’s it. Okay? There’s no easy way out. We’re not going to hold hands on some magical circle and go back, show up in our classroom five years ago like a family reunion, and do it all over again…. This is it. We’re all dead. So look at each other, take a deep fucking breath… and take this shit seriously. Because in a year, we’ll either be victorious or we’ll all be dead—and there won’t be an exception.”

The heroes nodded silently, doubtlessly filled with questions they knew she wouldn’t answer. So they just stood on, silent, waiting—watching.

“So let’s get started,” Sara said.

2

Training started that afternoon—and Sara didn’t hold back. She pumped them with as many spells as she could, determined to deal with the threat of their power once they all survived. She only stopped at giving out the Sayon Twilight core, which she did give to Raul and Emma, as promised. Unsurprisingly, Emma took four days to create her core, making it on par with Sara’s despite being inferior. If Emma had it from the start… it would’ve been devastating. By contrast, Raul took about six hours. Yet power wasn’t equal, and magical might didn’t translate to war prowess. If it did, Sara wouldn’t have killed Jason—or Agronus—with a broken golden core. Even a tainted Twilight core would turn him into a titan by Reemada’s standards.

Andy took over leadership. Darius led strike teams. Emily worked with the healing corps. Will focused on building artifact-grade items through array-based item creation, and time moved on.

The biggest question was what to do about the soul link.

3

Sara walked into the study one night and found Emma with dozens of notepads out, copying down notes and arrays and runes from Telia Sayon’s notebook (which they got from the crypt), trying to puzzle things together. Will was right beside her, trying to make sense of the arrays.

“So?” Sara asked. “Anything?”

Emma spread her arms on the table, resting her head on them. “No...”

Sara suddenly got a strange idea. “What about self-correcting arrays?” she asked.

Will snapped his fingers a few times next to his ears, so light that only he could hear the sound, and said, “What do you mean by ‘self-correcting?’”

“I once saw an array on a ballroom floor,” she said. “No matter how much I slashed at it, it would just… lift itself up. It was as if it didn’t need to be tied to a physical object like other arrays. It was ethereal almost. Fixed to a location and unchanging. That’s the only way I can explain it.”

Will stopped snapping his fingers. “Like for a seal?”

Sara’s muscles tensed. It wasn’t a seal. She thought it was the seal Telia Sayon locked Agronus in his castle with—and it wasn’t. It was a time-traveling summoning array. “Why do you think it’s a seal?” she asked.

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

“Well… if you create a seal, and someone can just break the object it’s on… that’d be a pretty shitty seal, don’t you think?”

Sara sat down. “I’m listening.”

Will pursed his lips. “Uh… that’s it.”

“That’s it?”

“Uh… sorry. But um… I don’t make seals.”

Sara rubbed her eye, feeling her soul decay like radioactive isotopes. She needed to get some rest. “Thanks…”

“I’ll… uh, check?” Will suggested.

She looked up. “Figure it out, and I’ll grant you any one non-creepy wish you desire.”

Will frowned. “Why the qualifier? Do you think I’m a creep?”

“No,” she said, “I just feel gross not putting a limiter on it.”

Emma giggled and sighed, eyes drooping.

“Clean up and get some rest,” Sara said. “We’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

“Okay…” Emma said.

Will flashed her a thumbs up and then set to work cleaning with the enthusiasm of a government employee. Then she walked away.

Sara walked through the castle, exhausted beyond belief. She was living out one of those days that never ends following a week from hell. Work. Life. Stress. There was only so much time before the confrontation with Daniel—

—and she still didn’t know his angle.

I just don’t get it, she thought. Why bind himself to Kye and Tiber if he wants hostages? If they die, he dies, and if I turn back time, they die, too. I have every incentive to not follow through….

That’s what was logical—but Daniel was far too smart to do something so haphazardly. There was a reason.

I’ll need to ask when he gets here, Sara sighed. There was a specialist coming the next day, but for now, she needed to get some rest.

Sara returned to her room and found Tiber sprawled on their bed, with Kye staring at the little girl with a bittersweet smile.

“Sorry,” he said. “She wanted to see you, but you came in late.”

Tiber mumbled in her sleep, and Sara smiled, sitting down beside her and running her fingers through her hair. The little girl cracked open her eyes. “Delina…?”

“I’m here,” Sara said.

“Why didn’t you show up sooner?”

“’Cause I wanna do this next year, and the year after, and the year after. So I gotta—“

“But what if there isn’t a next year? Wouldn’t it be better to spend more time now?”

Kye grimaced, and Sara’s heart sank, but neither avoided her question.

“I’ll do better,” Sara said—and meant it.

“You better,” Tiber grumbled.

Kye cast her an apologetic smile. She shrugged it off and reached into her spatial ring, pulling out a book. “You wanna read a story.”

Tiber’s eyes shot open. “Yeah!”

Sara handed it to her, and she frowned.

“No,” Tiber said, “you read it.”

“Tiber,” Kye said.

“Just let her be spoiled,” Sara said. She picked Tiber up and put her in the center of the bed. Then she and Kye snuggled up against Tiber, treating her like a princess as Sara read the story.

“In the lands of Sycanta….”

Tiber cooed and giggled as Sara read, and they all laughed and then Sara tried to stop, but Tiber asked for one more page and then another and another. Kye’s eyes depleted as time went on, realizing that the newfound needs that he didn’t know he “needed” until recently would go unattended. He finally gave in when Tiber fell asleep in the center of them like a spoiled brat. Sara blew the pouting man a kiss. He sent one back. Then they fell asleep together as a family, just like the way that she used to. She slept well that night.

4

Trenam Celsa was the forbidden magic expert from the Lemings Kingdom. He was a lanky man who looked ironically put together, sporting a shaved face and neat hair that didn’t look forced in the slightest. He walked around in noble clothing as if it were natural, and the whites of his eyes indicated that he didn’t have a problem sleeping due to exotic and crazy research. That was… disappointing. For whatever reason, she wanted the expert to look like the Keeta twins, who—in retrospect—would’ve been the people that she would’ve sought out first. Yet he didn’t, and she was horribly biased from the minute they sat down in the Royal Parlor for tea—

—which he drank with a grace that befitted the non-mad asshole he was.

Raul communicated a similar response, while Emma and Kye seemed immune to bias, waiting for him to finish tasting the tea so he could begin.

“This is exquisite,” Trenam said.

“I’m glad it suits your fancy,” Sara said dryly.

He put the cup down, eyes narrowing slightly to visually show intelligence, a gesture that had no real connection with mental function yet somehow felt mandatory. “You’ve contacted me to discuss the soul link spell; is that correct?”

Sara nodded. “Correct.”

Kye lifted his hand.

Trenam examined the hand carefully and looked back at her. “Who is it linked to?” he asked.

“My enemy.”

“Why?”

“That’s what I want to find out.”

Trenam leaned back, a slight grimace on his face. “I will aid you as best I can, but I must warn you that research on that array is extremely limited.”

Sara rolled her eyes and looked to the door. “This isn’t a common array, but it’s not rare, either,” she said. “It’s used regularly for interrogation and torture.” It was Mary’s favorite.

“That’s correct,” Trenam said. “And that’s all it’s good for. So why would someone waste hundreds or thousands of human lives to research something without any application?”

Sara could feel the blood pumping through her shoulders and the tightness of her forearms when he said it was useless.

“Listen to me,” he said. “Most spells have practical applications. For example, there’s a body linking array that’s used to copy body constitutions. You take an ideal specimen and link to it. Then you steal and translate their record so you can pass it down. It sounds like a spell that’s only useful for one thing, but Halkon proved how cruel and unusual and miraculous it was when King Elin suffered a sword wound in the mountains five centuries ago, and the king passed the healing record window. He was dying, so Halkon sent for a man who looked like the king. Near look alike. Then he linked their bodies together, giving the healthy man access to the king’s record. Then he used reverse healing magic to recreate the wound on the man, slashing open his organs.”

Kye grimaced, and Emma clasped her hands over her mouth.

“But then he healed the healthy man,” Trenam said, “and the healing transferred to the both of them, saving the king’s life. Do you understand? Even the strangest of arrays can have profound implications, but the direct soul link is useless beyond—“

“Obviously not.”

A sharp jolt of electricity passed between everyone when Sara pushed her tea across the table. “If it weren’t useful for anything but torture and interrogation, then my enemy, an arraymaster who can create teleportation arrays and arrays that dismantle people and change his appearance, wouldn’t put that array onto his heart.

Trenam’s eyes filled with the madness she wished he had when she met him. “He can create teleportation—“

“Mr. Celsa. I’m not here to discuss teleportation arrays or deconstruction arrays or face-changing arrays. And to be frank, I couldn’t give a fuck less about the fascinating history of body linking or whatever you care about.”

“Sara,” Raul hissed.

Sara put up her hand to stop him. “All I want to know is why anyone would purposely put this array on themselves. Do that, and I’ll give you this….” She reached into a spatial ring and pulled out a drawing of an array from Halkon’s Crypt. The moment the man’s eyes saw it, his jaw dropped. “Those are soul—“

“If you don’t tell me,” she said. “I’ll burn this in front of your face.”

“Sara!” Emma cried.

Trenam realized by their panic that she was dead serious, so he swallowed hard and put up his hands. “Please… hear me out.”

“I’m listening,” Sara said.

“As I said, there’s no research available on this array, but… I can tell you what people would research.”

Sara put the drawing face down on the table as a reward.

“For starters,” he said nervously, “they would research the range of the spell. All spells break down at some point, and that presents obvious problems.”

Sara’s eyes widened. “So if they were to leave for Emanac, they’d be safe?” she asked.

Kye’s face paled, and he touched her leg. She ignored him.

“Maybe,” Trenam said. “We know that linking spells can reach as far as a thousand miles, and the research is dubious at best. All we have is loose recorded times of death. It’s not something you can research, and it’s not something that you want to risk your life on.”

Sara’s chest deflated, and she looked away, avoiding Kye’s gaze. “What else?” she asked.

Trenam looked at Kye and then back to Sara with a pained expression. “Soul force requirements.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“This spell isn’t much different than a necromancy spell,” he said. “It’s linking one’s soul to another body, and if that body is hurt or killed, it affects the host. If necromancers died due to the loss of a puppet, it wouldn’t be very viable, would it?”

Sara tried to push the sound of Emma’s sharp breaths out of her mind. His implications were clear. “So you’re saying that he can kill them without dying?” she asked.

“If his soul force is strong enough,” Trenam said, “yes. And if his soul force is anywhere as strong as yours is… well… yes. Just yes.”

“This makes a lot more sense,” Sara said. And it did. Agronus had a massive amount of soul force, and that was the requirement to turn back time over a decade. It would be insane to think that a severed link between him and Tiber would kill him.

The room fell silent for a few minutes before she turned over the drawing and looked Trenam in the eye. “So how do I get rid of it?”

Trenam laced his fingers together, trying not to look at the drawing. “You shouldn’t,” he said. “One wrong move, and they’re dead.”

“So that’s it?”

“Unless you can find research on it,” Trenam said.

Sara nodded a few times, and then that strange thought from the night before captured her attention. “About seals created with soul force…” she said. He squeezed his fingers together and swallowed—

—now he was listening.