REPLACEABLE

Sand gets everywhere. In your teeth, under your nails, in the depths of your immortal soul. Even after four centuries, you never really get used to it.

I stand in front of an abandoned gas station, somewhere in the endless expanse of the Mojave. Place looks like it's been dead longer than most civilizations. Rust-eaten pumps reach toward the sky like mechanical tombstones. Windows, blown out by decades of desert storms, grin like broken teeth.

Perfect place to remember. To reflect.

My strings dance in the moonlight, cutting shadows just because they can. Each one a testament to power stolen, lives ruined, reality bent until it screamed.

Three hundred and eighty years ago. Feels like yesterday. Feels like eternity.

***

The warehouse had looked like any other in Star City's industrial district. Perfect place to train a god. Or break one.

Nyx had been fourteen then. Ten years under my tutelage, and he still hit the ground like a sack of broken promises. Blood pooled under his perfect suit, staining Italian silk with reality's hard lessons. Kid always dressed like his father - all presentation, no substance.

"Get up." My voice carried no sympathy. Strings danced between my fingers, black lightning crackling along their length. "We're not done."

He pushed himself up, arms shaking. Perfect hair a mess, perfect face sporting a collection of cuts and bruises that would make a prize fighter wince. A decade of practice, and he still bled like it was his first day.

"I can't... I need a minute."

"You think your enemies will give you a minute?" I unleashed a barrage of lightning-wrapped strings. They cut through the air like angry serpents, each one hungry for blood.

This time, he surprised me. Time slowed around him - not much, just enough to make my strings look like lazy pythons in molasses. He slipped between them, each movement precise, calculated. Learning. Growing. I smiled. Added more strings. Charged them with Maelstrom's fury. Lightning arced between them, turning the air into an electric web of death. Nyx's temporal bubble expanded. Two seconds of slowed time. Then three. A new record. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he danced through my death trap, letting gravity take five times longer to pull him down.

Then his power flickered. Just for a moment. That's all it took.

One string caught his shoulder, opening a line of red through expensive fabric. Another wrapped around his ankle. I yanked, hard. The floor rushed up to meet his face with all the subtlety of a freight train. The impact cracked concrete. Time snapped back to normal speed. Blood sprayed from his nose, painting abstract art on the warehouse floor.

"Better," I admitted. "But not good enough."

He rolled to his feet, faster this time. His power rippled outward, reversing the last few seconds of damage. Bones unknit themselves, blood flowed backward, bruises faded like old photographs. The warehouse looked like a war zone. Scorch marks from lightning strikes decorated the walls. Concrete floors bore crater-sized testimonies to our "lessons." Reality itself felt thin there, worn down by repeated abuse. Ten years ago, he couldn't slow a falling leaf. Five years ago, he managed to delay a bullet by half a second. Now he could create bubbles of slowed time, even reverse small injuries.

Still party tricks compared to Chronos's mastery. But progress. Painful, bloody progress.

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"There are others out there," I continued, launching another attack. Strings wrapped in Maelstrom's storms met strings charged with Torque's force. "Stronger than the Fellowship. Hungrier."

Nyx managed to deflect one string with a temporal bubble. The others caught him across the chest, opening lines of red through expensive fabric. "Like who?"

"Does it matter?" A wave of telekinetic force slammed him against a wall. Lightning followed, turning the air to ozone and pain. "They're just names for the things that want to kill you."

Pain accompanied each word. Teaching through trauma. The only way I know how.

"Why-" Nyx gasped between attacks, "why haven't you mentioned them before?"

I smiled, all teeth and bad intentions. "Because you weren't ready to survive the knowledge."

My strings wrapped around him, gentle as a lover's embrace, tight as a hangman's noose. I lifted him high, watching blood drip from a dozen cuts.

"The Fellowship was just the beginning," I explained, tightening my grip. "They were powerful, yes, but limited by their own rules. Their own morality." A dismissive laugh. "The others? They make the Fellowship look like kindergarten teachers."

Nyx struggled against my strings, face turning purple. His temporal power flickered, trying to reverse time enough to escape. Cute, even after all these years. I slammed him down. Concrete cracked under the impact. More blood, more pain, more lessons written in flesh and bone.

"You need to be stronger," I growled, standing over him. "Faster. Smarter. Because when they come - and they will come - being Chronos's son won't save you."

He coughed, spitting red. "Then make me immortal. Like you. Like father."

The request hung in the air like stale smoke. Not the first time he'd asked. Wouldn't be the last.

"No."

"Why?" Anger gave him strength. He pushed himself up, eyes blazing with inherited power. "You know I'll die eventually. If not in battle, then to time itself."

I smiled, cold as a mortician's hands. "Everyone dies, kid. Well, almost everyone."

"I could be stronger," he pressed. "More useful. We could fight them together, forever-"

My strings cut off his words, wrapping around his throat. "Let me make something clear." I pulled him close, close enough to smell the fear under his designer cologne. "You're useful now. But useful things get replaced."

Understanding dawned in those eyes so like his father's. Fear mixed with revelation mixed with rage. His temporal powers flickered weakly, instinctively trying to reverse what couldn't be undone.

Silence filled the warehouse, heavy as a coffin lid. Even the strings went quiet, watching, waiting.

Looking back now, centuries later, I can still see those eyes. Still see the power growing in him day by day. But it's his brother that occupies my thoughts tonight.

Lark. The other half of the equation. The one who ran. The one who chose a different path.

The gas station's rusted sign creaks in the wind. "Last Stop," it promises in faded letters. Fitting. This whole world's running on empty, waiting for someone to pull its strings.

"Get up." I watch him spit blood onto concrete. "Your brother wouldn't stay down."

That gets him moving. Rage is a better teacher than pain.

"Moscow. Singapore. Cape Town." My strings dance with stolen lightning. "Your brother's been busy. Building something. Something that wants us dead."

Nyx wipes his split lip, eyes hardening at the mention of Lark. "How many?"

"Three confirmed. Maybe more." The strings pull him to his feet. "Woman in Moscow who ages everything she touches. Power-thief in Cape Town leaving dead zones in his wake. And a fear-bender who painted a subway station red before your brother... saved her."

He steadies himself against a wall. "Rehabilitated, you mean."

"If that's what you want to call it."

Thunder rolls outside. Not natural. Weather responding to inherited power. To rage. My strings twist anxiously. Been doing that a lot lately. They know something's coming. Something big.

"There's someone in Berlin," I say, voice low. "Makes your brother's collection of strays look like children playing pretend. The kind of power that'd make Chronos himself pause."

The air feels heavier. Nyx's eyes narrow. "Who?"

"Man who can stop time. Not just slow it. Stop it. Entire city blocks frozen in perfect stasis. People. Bullets. Light itself." I let that sink in. "And your brother's people are closing in."

Now I have his attention. Perfect.

"When do we leave?"

I smile. All teeth, no warmth. "Pack a coat. Berlin's waiting."

After all, why break the world when you can own it?