CHAPTER THREE: THE MAGE
980 Words
She expected darkness.
Instead, she woke up.
The rain was gone. The cliff was gone.
She was lying in a field of tall golden grass, the sky painted in the soft hues of dawn. Her body felt… wrong. Lighter. Younger.
Her hands—she raised them slowly—were smaller.
“No…” she whispered.
A voice answered behind her.
“You always look confused the first time.”
Lira turned sharply.
A boy stood there, maybe her age—or what her age used to be. Dark hair, calm eyes, and a strange, knowing smile.
“Who are you?” she asked.
He tilted his head. “That depends. Which version of you am I talking to?”
Her heart skipped. “What does that mean?”
He stepped closer, pointing at the silver clock in her hand.
“That means,” he said softly, “you’ve already died.”
Lira’s name, she soon discovered, still belonged to her—but everything else had changed.
She was back in her village.
Back before the fire.
Back before the war.
Back before everything she had lost.
“This is impossible,” she muttered, walking through the familiar streets. People laughed, vendors shouted, children ran past her—alive. All alive.
She saw her mother.
Alive.
Lira’s breath caught in her throat.
Her mother stood at the doorway of their home, smiling just as she always had. No scars. No sadness. No memory of the tragedy that had once consumed their lives.
Lira ran to her and embraced her tightly.
“Lira?” her mother laughed gently. “What’s gotten into you?”
Tears streamed down Lira’s face. “Nothing… I just… missed you.”
Her mother brushed her hair. “You’ve been gone for only a few hours.”
A few hours.
For Lira, it had been years.
That night, the boy returned.
He appeared sitting on her windowsill as if he had always been there.
“You’re adjusting faster this time,” he said.
“This time?” Lira echoed.
He nodded. “You’ve done this before.”
Her grip tightened on the clock. “Explain.”
He sighed, jumping down into the room. “The short version? That clock is not broken. It’s a relic. A time anchor. It binds your soul to moments that refuse to stay dead.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t have to. Magic rarely does.”
Lira shook her head. “I died.”
“Yes.”
“And now I’m here.”
“Yes.”
“So I went back in time.”
The boy smiled faintly. “Not exactly. You were reborn into your own past. There’s a difference.”
She stared at him. “Who are you?”
He hesitated, just for a moment.
“My name is Kael,” he said. “And I’ve been waiting for you to remember me.”
Days passed.
Lira began to notice the differences.
Small things at first.
A bird that flew in the wrong direction. A conversation she remembered differently. A scar on a man’s face that shouldn’t exist yet.
“You’re changing things,” Kael told her.
“I’m not doing anything,” she argued.
“You’re here. That’s enough.”
Lira clenched her fists. “If I can change things… then I can stop the fire.”
Kael’s expression darkened.
“No.”
“Yes,” she insisted. “If I warn them—”
“You’ll make it worse.”
“How could saving lives make anything worse?”
He stepped closer, his voice low. “Because time doesn’t like being rewritten. It pushes back.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will,” he said quietly. “You always do.”
She didn’t listen.
Of course she didn’t.
The fire had taken everything from her in her previous life. If this was a second chance, she would not waste it.
Lira spent days preparing.
She watched the patterns. The guards. The merchants. The small details that had once led to the catastrophe.
And then, on the night it was supposed to happen, she acted.
She warned the villagers.
She moved the flammable supplies.
She even confronted the man responsible—the one who had lit the first spark.
“I know what you’re planning,” she told him.
He looked at her with confusion… then fear.
“How do you—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she cut in. “Just stop.”
And for a moment, it worked.
The fire never started.
The village remained safe.
Lira stood in the quiet streets, her heart pounding with relief.
“I did it,” she whispered.
But Kael was nowhere to be found.
The first sign was the sky.
It cracked.
Not visibly—not in a way others could see—but Lira felt it. A strange, hollow tension, like reality itself was stretching too thin.
Then people began to disappear.
Not all at once.
One by one.
A merchant mid-sentence.
A child mid-laughter.
Gone.
No trace. No memory left behind.
“Kael!” Lira shouted, panic rising in her chest. “What’s happening?!”
He appeared beside her, his expression grim.
“You broke the moment.”
“I saved them!”
“You erased the event that defined this timeline,” he said sharply. “Without it, the future has no foundation.”
Lira shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense!”
“Time isn’t a straight line,” Kael snapped. “It’s a web. You cut one thread, the others collapse.”
Another person vanished.
Lira’s breath quickened. “Fix it.”
“You have to let it happen.”
“No.”
“Lira—”
“No!” she screamed. “I won’t let them die again!”
Kael’s eyes softened.
“You already did.”
- Writer
