The air grew warmer beside him, presence coalescing, the soft whisper of fabric unmistakable. Cael had never felt so close.
“You found the truth,” Cael said quietly. “Your mother was… remarkable. And reckless. And probably right about everything.”
“She bound us together,” Damian said, words almost lost in awe. “Made sure I'd never be alone. But also?—”
“Also ensured that I would learn to care,” Cael finished gently. “To choose rather than simply follow cosmic law.”
They stood in the dusty silence, surrounded by centuries of forgotten knowledge, both of them struggling to absorb what their connection really meant.
“How do you feel about that?” Damian asked. “Being manipulated by a mortal’s magic?”
“I should be angry,” Cael admitted. “Cosmic entities aren’t meant to be bound by mortal will. But I find myself… grateful. Without her, I would never have questioned my purpose. Never have learned that there are other ways to exist.”
“And you don’t resent being tied to someone like me?” Damian asked, holding his breath.
Cael moved closer, the cold of his form radiating through the air. “Damian,” he said, voice steady as a vow. “If I could have chosen—of all the souls in all the threads—I would have chosen you. Not because I had to, but because you make me want to try.”
The words struck Damian with a quiet, shattering hope. He pressed his hand to his chest, feeling the echo of warmth. Not love—not yet. But something that could grow into it, if they dared give it time.
For the first time, Damian let himself hope. Not just for the city, or his patients, but for himself—for a future that might hold more than pain, more than loneliness, more than duty. He stood in the ancient library, surrounded by the evidence of centuries, and let the truth settle in his heart: whatever had begun between him and Cael, it was changing both of them in ways neither could have imagined.
And in the hush that followed, Damian realized he wasn’t afraid.
Not anymore.
Chapter 10
Where the Time Gathers
Cael
He walked openly through Varos in the hushed hours before dawn. Each step felt like commitment, like choosing mortality over the ethereal drift he'd known for eons.
The change unsettled him in ways he was only beginning to understand. His feet—when had he started thinking of them asfeetrather than extensions of cosmic will?—pressed against cobblestones with weight that surprised him. The cold bit at his skin now, sharp and immediate, making him pull the borrowed coat tighter around shoulders that had never known temperature before. His stomach cramped with what he was learning to recognize as hunger, an alien sensation that left him lightheaded and strangely vulnerable.
This is what mortality feels like,he thought, stumbling slightly as exhaustion—actual, physical exhaustion—dragged at his limbs.No wonder they treasure it so fiercely.
Time bent subtly around his presence, reacting to his increasing corporeality with small rebellions against naturallaw. Street clocks stuttered as he passed, their mechanical hands jumping backward for crucial seconds before resuming their steady march toward everyone's eventual debt. Shadows lingered longer than physics should have allowed, clinging to his form like memory given substance.
The early morning air carried scents that made his newly sensitive nose burn: coal smoke thick enough to taste, the sour tang of unwashed bodies pressed too close together, the metallic bite of time-magic that bled through cracked foundations like infected wounds. Underneath it all, the green struggle of plants fighting to grow in polluted soil—hope made manifest in the most unlikely places.
A dog growled as he passed, hackles raised, sensing something not-quite-right about the figure that cast shadows but moved too quietly. The sound made Cael flinch, his borrowed heart racing with an emotion he slowly identified as fear. When had he become afraid of being discovered?
His wandering was aimless at first, driven more by restless energy than any particular destination. But as the sky began to lighten with the gray pre-dawn that passed for sunrise in Varos, Cael found himself drawn toward the upper districts where the city's wealthy made their homes in floating quarters that literally looked down on the suffering below.
The House of Years rose before him like a monument to mortal cruelty, its opulent facade gleaming with inlaid precious metals and crystals that caught and refracted light in patterns designed to mesmerize and impress. The building itself seemed to hum with stolen time, making Cael's teeth ache with sympathetic resonance.
Through its crystalline windows, he observed the final stages of negotiations that had been conducted throughout the night. Nobles emerged from the building's carved doors, their laughter sharp and satisfied, their movements carrying the looseconfidence of people who had just purchased extended life from the desperate. One woman, her face artificially youthful but her eyes ancient with cruelty, counted time-crystals like a merchant tallying profit.
“Forty years for a face-lift,” she murmured to her companion, voice carrying on the still morning air. “Quite reasonable, considering the girl was pretty enough to make it worthwhile.”
For the first time in his existence, Cael felt something unfamiliar and burning settle in his chest. It took him long moments to identify the sensation, to put a name to the way his borrowed stomach clenched with revulsion at what he was witnessing.
Disgust. Pure, uncomplicated moral disgust at the casual cruelty of beings who treated others' life spans like currency to be traded for their own comfort.
He had ended countless lives throughout his cosmic service, had guided souls across the threshold between existence and whatever lay beyond. But those had been natural deaths, endings that served cosmic balance and universal law. This was different. This was systematic exploitation of mortality for profit, the transformation of the fundamental force of life into commodity.
At the edge of the plaza, Cael witnessed a transaction that stopped him cold. A woman knelt before a Time Exchange official, her hands shaking as she signed documents that would sell her young daughter's next forty years to clear a family debt that had accumulated through medical expenses and failed crops.
