The paradox Forge

The world was white—blinding, infinite, and utterly consuming.

Eiser had no sense of body, no concept of time. He was floating—or perhaps falling—through an abyss of light. The sound of rushing wind filled his ears, yet there was no ground, no up or down, only the suffocating brilliance surrounding him.

Then, like a crack splitting across glass, reality fractured. The white void splintered into countless shards, each reflecting different versions of himself, of the world, of time itself. Eiser caught glimpses of other versions of himself—some older, some scarred, some standing triumphant over fallen enemies, others crumbling in despair.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the light shattered.

Eiser hit the ground hard, his breath knocked from his lungs. He coughed, gasping for air, and pushed himself up. The world around him was… wrong.

The Nexus was gone. The ruins, the twisted time-worn remnants, all vanished. Instead, he found himself standing in a place both familiar and alien—an endless cityscape, buildings stretching endlessly into the sky, their edges blurred, as if they existed in multiple realities at once. Streets curved impossibly, looping back on themselves, disappearing into thin air only to reappear in the distance.

A city caught in a paradox.

Pain seared through his skull, and a surge of knowledge that was not his own forced its way into his mind. Memories that didn't belong to him—memories of lifetimes he never lived. He saw himself leading armies, being hunted by shadowy figures, standing atop a crumbling tower as the sky bled red. He saw himself die—over and over again.

He clutched his head, barely containing a scream.

"Eiser Grains."

The voice was calm, deep, and laced with authority.

Eiser turned sharply. A figure stood before him, draped in flowing robes that shimmered with an unnatural glow, shifting colors as though reflecting a thousand different timelines at once. His face was lined with age, but his eyes burned with an unnatural light.

"You have arrived at the heart of the Paradox," the man said. "And now, your trial begins."

---

The air pulsed, and suddenly Eiser was no longer alone. Figures emerged from the shifting streets, some appearing out of thin air, others stepping from between the cracks of space itself. They were warriors, scholars, wraith-like beings whose forms flickered between existence and non-existence.

"The Trial of the Fractured Dawn," the elder figure announced. "Only those who can control time without being consumed by it will survive."

Eiser barely had time to react before the first attack came. A blade shimmered through the air, cutting toward him at impossible angles, moving as if guided by an unseen force. He threw himself backward, narrowly dodging, only to find the warrior had already repositioned behind him.

He's moving through time!

Eiser rolled, trying to summon the fragments of his own power, but they sputtered unpredictably. Time was warped here; his abilities refused to obey him.

He had no choice but to fight.

Blow after blow came, forcing him to move purely on instinct. His enemy was relentless, each attack faster than the last, each strike aiming not where he was, but where he would be. Eiser's breath came in ragged gasps. He was being outpaced, outmaneuvered—

Until something in him shifted.

A fragment of knowledge, buried deep within his mind, surfaced. One of those impossible memories. A battle like this, fought in a different time, a different life. His past self had lost—but his present self didn't have to.

He saw the path of his opponent's next strike a fraction of a second before it happened. He moved—not in response, but in anticipation.

Steel met air. The warrior hesitated, just for a moment, and Eiser drove his fist into his enemy's ribs with all the strength he had left. The warrior staggered, and Eiser didn't waste the opening. He twisted, bringing his knee up, sending his opponent crashing to the ground.

Silence.

Then, slow clapping.

The elder nodded approvingly. "You have glimpsed it—the flow of time. But you are still unshaped. The real test begins now."

Eiser barely had time to catch his breath before the world around him twisted again. He was falling—no, being pulled—through time itself. The city shattered, and in its place, a new battlefield emerged.

A wasteland of broken clocks and frozen moments, where time itself had died.

And in the distance, waiting for him, was something far worse than any warrior.

A being whose very presence distorted reality. A being who had walked through the ruins of history itself.

Synn.

His missing friend. His lost future.

And the one who had become his greatest enemy.