Grey Aevum 5

“Not sure why I’m so worried about breaking it, it’s like it’s already…broken…” I trailed off, realization wiping away my frustration and replacing it with a sudden wary excitement.

Sylvie’s frown deepened and she sat up straighter, watching me silently.

The scar on my core itched again as I activated it, pushing mana into Aroa’s Requiem. Aetheric motes spilled down my arms and jumped to the keystone, buzzing over the matte surface before being drawn into the relic. Closing my eyes, I let my mind flow with them, and again I was pulled inward. Darkness extended before me, full of distant pinpoints of light.

Then I was shunted uncomfortably back into my own body.

“Did you feel that?” I asked, too excited to be disappointed. “Something was definitely different that time.”

Sylvie shook her head and scooted slightly closer. “But why?”

“The godrune lets me sort of…push time through an item, turning back the clock on something that is broken.” I considered the exit portal from the snowy zone where I’d met Three Steps and the other Shadow Claws. Then I remembered the visions of a potential future I’d seen when attempting to unlock insight into that first keystone. “Whether because of my own failures in understanding or some natural limit due to my affinity with spatium aether arts, I couldn’t master it, not the way I did Realmheart. There are…limitations.”

Still, I was eager to keep trying now that I’d made some progress—or at least thought I had.

Activating Aroa’s Requiem again, I let the amethyst motes gravitate toward the keystone on their own, not controlling them directly. I purposefully held my mind back, not wanting to be drawn into the keystone only to be forced out again, which would prevent me from tracking the godrune’s progress.

Aetheric particles buzzed over the keystone, some sinking into it, but only just below the surface. I felt them hanging there, suspended, almost trembling with suppressed purpose as my intention overrode the particles’ natural inclination.

I felt certain that Aroa’s Requiem was the key, but some keys turned differently than others.

My intent, I realized. Just as I had to purposefully consider the scar in a certain way to keep it from burrowing through my conscious mind, I had to channel the godrune with a specific intent as well. Because it didn’t simply allow me to fix a static object, but manipulate the way time had worked on that object.

That was the key. The relic wasn’t broken or in need of fixing, but perhaps it had to be aligned with a certain state it had been in time to open.

“Ingenious,” I muttered, wondering at the djinn mind that had created such a puzzle.

Feeling myself beginning to grin, I adjusted the way I was holding the godrune in my mind, and started pushing the channeled aether through the keystone. I envisioned it not as repairing some broken internal component, but rather turning back the hands of a clock, setting a series of cogs into motion within.

As these metaphorical cogs turned, I put pressure on the relic, trying to ease into the keystone realm within.

The room went dark again. And slowly, very slowly, the dark gave way to plum purple, then light pink, and finally I found myself before a wall of amethyst energy.

It had worked, but I was not drawn through the aetheric barrier, nor could I push myself into it.

But I knew now what needed to be done. There were four keystones. Each was needed to progress my understanding of the aspect of Fate. Since Aroa’s Requiem had brought me to this point…

With my mind entangled within the keystone, channeling aether into Realmheart took time. My connection to the godrune felt distant and tentative, but I was certain about my course and so never doubted what I was attempting to do.

Dozens of white lines of pure mana appeared in my vision, spilling out of narrow gaps in the barrier, invisible without sight of the mana particles.

Leaning forward, I drifted into one of the gaps. It carved through the aether like a maze, but by following the trail of mana I easily passed through. And it appeared within what I could only describe as an aetheric lightning storm.

Violet clouds of aether burst with bolts of hot white mana with a noise like shattering glass, the crashing flashes coming one after another with sickening frequency. Within moments, I felt my temples begin to ache and burn, my consciousness already being drawn out of the keystone realm and back toward my body.

I gritted my teeth and leaned into the sensation, forcing my way forward.

A bolt of mana struck me, and my mind lurched to a memory.