When the time broke: Destiny collide

CHAPTER 5: THE WARRIORS TEST

Daniel didn't move.

The warrior stood between him and the trees, spear resting loose in one hand like it weighed nothing. Up close, Daniel could see scars along his forearms, old ones, the kind that came from a life Daniel didn't understand.

"I said come with me."

"Yeah, I heard you the first time," Daniel said, backing up half a step. "I'm just trying to figure out why."

The warrior's eyes flicked to the broken stone still lying in the grass behind Daniel.

"Because you touched what you shouldn't have. And it showed you something." It wasn't a question.

Daniel's throat went dry. "How do you know that?"

"Because it only glows for those it chooses to speak to." The warrior lowered the spear, planting its end in the dirt. "Tell me what you saw."

Daniel hesitated, then told him. The burning palace. The staff breaking apart. The crown. The crying girl whose face he never saw.

The warrior went very still. "Say that again."

"Why? Did I fail some kind of test?"

"No. You passed one you didn't know you were taking."

Before Daniel could ask what that meant, voices broke through the trees — Grace's, first, sharp with worry.

"Daniel!"

Something in Daniel's chest loosened at the sound of her voice before he could stop it. He hated how obvious it probably was on his face, so he arranged it into something closer to annoyed relief by the time she burst through the treeline.

"I'm fine," he said quickly. "I think. Probably."

Grace's eyes swept over him, checking, the way she always did without seeming to realize she was doing it. Daniel looked away first.

Labi's face went pale at the sight of the warrior. He dropped into a quick bow. "Balogun. I didn't know you were the one sent."

"I wasn't sent. I came on my own — before the ones who were, arrive first." Balogun's gaze moved over all of them. "The king has ordered you brought before him. If you resist, his men have been told to make you regret it."

Grace's voice came out small. "So what do we do?"

"You disappear. Tonight." Balogun looked to Labi. "The Old One's hut isn't safe — Ojo saw you go there."

Labi's jaw tightened, something old and tired passing over his face. "Ojo. Of course."

"He was watching from the trees," Loba said. Her eyes weren't on Balogun, though — they'd drifted, just briefly, to Sophia, who was crouched by the broken stone studying its carvings with total focus, unaware. Loba looked away before anyone noticed. Almost anyone.

Ethan noticed.

He didn't say anything. He just moved a half-step closer to Sophia's side, the way he always seemed to without quite meaning to, and Loba's mouth pressed into a small, resigned line.

Balogun sketched a rough map in the dirt with his spear. "A shrine past the second ridge. No one uses it anymore. You'll be hidden there until I learn more about why the staff chose you." His eyes lingered on Daniel. "And why it's still speaking."

"It's not done talking to me, is it," Daniel said.

"No. I don't think it is."

Marching feet, faint but growing. Labi's head snapped up.

"That's them."

"Go," Balogun said. "I'll slow them down."

"You're staying?" Grace said.

"They'll ask why I was in the forest. I'll lie. I'm very good at lying." Something almost warm crossed his face. "Go, small one. Before I regret helping you at all."

They ran.

They ran until the sound of marching feet faded, until the ground sloped upward beneath them and the sky burned orange with evening. By the time Labi slowed, raising a hand, none of them had breath left to argue.

"There," he said.

A small stone shrine, half-swallowed by vines, its carvings worn smooth by years of rain no one had bothered to shelter it from.

"No one comes here anymore," Loba said, pushing through the entrance. "Which is why Balogun chose it."

Inside, the air was cool and old. Sophia's fingers found carvings on the wall — the same pattern as the Staff of Time.

"Guys. Look at this."

Ethan crouched beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched, and if he noticed, he didn't move away. Loba, settling nearby, noticed for him.

"So this place isn't random," Sophia murmured. "It's connected. To the staff. To us."

Grace sank against the far wall, pulling her knees to her chest, the day's adrenaline finally draining out of her all at once. "Can we just— stop. For a second. I want to go home."

Daniel sat down beside her before he'd quite decided to. Close, but not too close. "We will," he said, quieter than he meant to. "I promise."

Grace glanced at him, surprised — Daniel didn't usually sound like that. She didn't say anything, but she didn't move away either.

Lase settled next to Labi without a word, the way people do when they've done it a thousand times before. Their hands found each other in the dark, quiet, unremarked on, like it didn't need announcing to people who already knew.

"You still haven't told us everything," Sophia said to Daniel, turning to him properly. "The vision."

So he told them all of it. The palace. The staff breaking. The crown. The girl whose face he never saw.

Silence.

"That's a warning," Labi said finally. "Not a memory. Something that hasn't happened yet."

"Great," Daniel muttered. "So we're not just stuck in the past. We're stuck before it goes wrong."

"Maybe that's why the staff picked you four," Loba said slowly. "Not by accident. Maybe it needed people who could still stop it."

"You say that like you know how the staff picks people," Sophia said, watching Labi more than Loba as she said it.

Something flickered across Labi's face — there and gone, fast enough that only Sophia, watching closely, caught it.

"I don't," Labi said. Too quickly.

Lase's hand tightened slightly around his. No one else seemed to notice. Sophia filed it away.

"Balogun said he'd come back with answers," she said instead, letting it go for now. "Until then, we're safest here. Together."

Daniel set the wrapped stone down carefully between them.

"For what it's worth," he said, glancing at Grace and then quickly away, "I'm glad you guys came for me."

Grace managed a tired smile. "Don't get used to it."

It was the first thing that had made any of them laugh all day.

Outside, unseen, a pair of eyes watched the shrine's entrance — and weny slowly. Fading into the shadows