Ebonheim stepped through the dimensional fissure into the fractal dimension where the beam of quintessence led. Cepheid had returned to its dormant form and waited within her divine storage. The world beyond was unlike anything she had ever known, and for a moment, she simply stood still, letting her eyes adjust to the shifting reality around her.

  The space felt vast, infinite even, with no clear beginning or end. Twisting, spiraling paths stretched in all directions, some crisscrossing through the air like bridges suspended in a void. Some led upward into the sky, only to loop back around, while others vanished into distant horizons that seemed to fold into themselves.

  The sky, if it could even be called that, was a swirling vortex of colors—dark purples, brilliant blues, and shimmering silver streaks that occasionally burst into cascading arcs of lightning.

  The ground beneath her feet was solid—at least for now—but it, too, was strange. It resembled polished stone, though its surface rippled as if made of liquid glass. With every step, it shimmered and vibrated, responding to her presence.

  Ebonheim's breath fogged in the cold, though the air itself felt neither warm nor cold. It simply was, like the absence of sensation. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear the faint echo of voices, as if a crowd was murmuring just beyond the edges of her perception.

  "This is weird..."

  She looked back toward where she entered. The portal she arrived through no longer existed. The others had scattered, each following different leads within the fractal dimensions. She felt the weight of her isolation now, more than ever.

  "I'm on my own now," she muttered nervously to herself. "Time to get moving."

  She stepped forward cautiously, her footfalls soft on the smooth, glass-like surface of the path. It didn't feel solid, yet it held her weight. Ahead, the path branched off in a dozen different directions, each one curving into impossible shapes, as if inviting her to choose a fate. She studied the paths for a moment, trying to find something familiar, but nothing made sense.

  A sudden, soft glow caught her attention. Off to her left, a faint shimmer of light pulsed along one of the pathways, almost as if it was calling to her.

  Ebonheim narrowed her eyes, stepping closer to get a better look. The light was rhythmic, its pulse slow and steady, as if it were a heartbeat. Instinctively, she reached out with her senses, feeling the subtle pull of divine energy from within the glow. It was faint, but unmistakable—Quintessence.

  The flow of divine energy, trapped and scattered in this fractured space.

  A trail. She set her jaw and started along the glowing path.

  The air was thick with a sensation she couldn't quite describe—like walking through water, each movement requiring a fraction more effort than it should.

  As she walked, time itself seemed to warp around her. One moment, she felt as though she had been walking for hours, each step echoing endlessly into the distance. The next moment, time snapped back, and it felt like mere seconds had passed. The strange geometry of the fractal distorted her sense of time and direction.

  "I gotta keep focus. Can't lose track in here..."

  Ebonheim breathed deeply and pushed forward, ignoring the fatigue building in her legs.

  Ahead, the light began to fade, and a faint humming filled the air. Ebonheim slowed her pace as the pathway opened into a vast chamber, its walls shimmering with mirrored reflections. It was an eerily beautiful sight—the chamber seemed to ripple, as though it were a pool disturbed by a stone's throw.

  At its center floated a strange construct, suspended in mid-air by nothing she could discern. It was a sphere made entirely of tiny hexagonal panels that rotated slowly about its axis. Its surface was covered in shifting runes, and it glowed faintly with a soft golden hue. A latticework of beams connected these plates to each other.

  As Ebonheim watched, the spinning slowed until finally coming to a stop.

  "Another orb," she mused quietly as she examined it. "Wonder how this one works?"

  She crept closer to inspect the device, studying its complex pattern and construction. The panels of metal interlocked perfectly with one another, forming an impenetrable shell of protection. Inside the core lay another crystal sphere, much like the one from the obelisk earlier, only smaller.

  "What is this thing?" she murmured, her voice barely a whisper in the vast chamber.

  The answer didn't come. No divine intuition, no sudden insight. Just the silence, broken only by the occasional hum of the rotating sphere.

  Ebonheim furrowed her brow and stepped even closer, the hum now resonating through her chest. Her eyes were drawn to the runes once more, and now she noticed something odd. Each one of them seemed to shift in rhythm with her movements, as though they were reacting to her presence. When she took a step back, the runes dimmed slightly, their pulse slowing. When she leaned forward, they brightened, quickening their beat.

  Woah. It wasn't just reacting to her presence—was it watching her?

  Ebonheim glanced around the chamber, her gaze sweeping over the mirrored walls. For a moment, she caught sight of her reflection in the far corner, and something about it gave her pause.

  She turned to face it fully, eyes narrowing. Her reflection blinked back at her, but there was a delay—just a heartbeat off. She moved her arm slightly, and the reflection followed, but a fraction of a second too late. She took a step forward, and her double mirrored the motion, only a little slower.

  Time is wrong here.

  She hadn't noticed it before, but now it was undeniable. The very fabric of this place wasn't behaving as it should. She turned back to the construct, her mind racing.

  Could this device be the cause? Was it manipulating time in some way?

  She stepped closer, reaching out tentatively toward the floating structure, but stopped short. The air in front of her hand rippled, warping as though she had disturbed the surface of a still pond. Her hand tingled, and she drew it back. The device pulsed once, then twice, the runes flaring briefly before dimming again.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  "I don't like this," she muttered, taking a step backward.

  She knelt down, her fingers brushing against the smooth surface of the floor. There were no seams, no obvious mechanism that would suggest how it worked. Just the runes, ever-shifting, and the strange distortion in the air. She stood again, circling the construct, her mind working through the possibilities.

  Perhaps it was some kind of lock. Maybe if she touched the correct sequence of runes in order... But which ones? And how many times? If she guessed wrong, would the device react badly? Could she be trapped in this place forever? The thought sent a shiver through her body.

  Her gaze drifted back to the mirrored walls, where her reflections moved in and out of sync with her. She stopped in front of one, raising her hand again. The reflection followed, a second too late, then caught up with her. She tilted her head, watching as her mirrored self did the same, but slower, as if struggling to keep up.

  Her eyes flicked back to the device.

  Time is wrong here, she thought again, the realization settling in. This wasn't a lock of metal or stone. It was a lock on time itself.

  Ebonheim stepped closer again, her fingers flexing at her sides as she studied the shimmering runes that danced across its surface.

  The runes held her gaze, and now, with more clarity, she began to distinguish something in their chaotic form.

  They were arranged in three distinct layers, each set pulsing at a different rhythm. The outermost layer glowed gold, its light slow and steady, like the fading embers of a fire long extinguished. The middle layer shimmered with a blue hue, constantly shifting, flickering in time with her every breath. And the innermost layer—barely visible—was a pale silver, its light faint and elusive, as if it hadn't quite solidified into something real.

  Ebonheim reached out with her divine senses, probing the construct for answers. To her surprise, she felt something respond, though not in words. It was more of a feeling.

  It felt as though the very essence of time had been woven into the device, and her presence alone stirred the threads. She bit her lip, her fingers itching to touch the runes, to understand them. But this wasn't something she could solve with brute force or divine power alone.

  She had to think.

  She tudied the runes in silence, her brow furrowed as the hum of the chamber reverberated through her chest. The floating construct continued its rhythmic pulse, but the runes—golden, blue, and faint silver—offered no immediate answers.

  Her gaze wandered from the runes to the mirrored walls surrounding her. She couldn't shake the feeling that her movements were being reflected back at her, but in a way that felt wrong. Her earlier glance at her reflection in the mirrored walls of the chamber had already unsettled her. The image of herself, slightly delayed, replayed in her mind.

  She glanced at the mirrored wall again. Her reflection stared back, mimicking her movements, but just a fraction too late. She stepped to the side, watching as her mirrored self moved slower than it should. It wasn't just an ordinary delay—there was something deliberate about it, something she felt connected to this place. She turned back to the construct, her mind churning.

  The runes brightened slightly as she approached again. They shifted in sequence—gold on the outside, blue in the middle, and silver faintly flickering at the core. Each layer seemed to pulse with a different rhythm, as if they were tied to separate forces, but she couldn't tell what they represented.

  Her reflection moved again, just behind her. The delay wasn't constant. It changed, depending on how close she stood to the device. Sometimes less, sometimes more.

  There was a pattern here, something just beyond her grasp.

  She paused, watching her reflection once more, studying the way it moved. It was like looking at herself from a moment in the past—a version of her that had already acted. And with that realization, it clicked.

  This place was more than just disorienting—it was manipulating time itself. Her reflections weren't just delayed; they were echoes of her past actions, replaying out of sync with the present.

  Ebonheim frowned, her eyes darting back to the runes. The golden ones...could they represent the past?

  She took a step to the side and watched one of her delayed reflections while watching the golden runes. One flickered at the exact moment her reflection took that same step. She tried again, moving in a different direction this time. Another golden rune shone in response, exactly when her reflection took a second step.

  And suddenly she understood. The outer layer was the past. She could use it to predict the other two.

  Ebonheim took another step forward, watching the runes pulse as she moved. The blue layer responded immediately, flickering in tune with her steps, almost as if it was reacting to her actions in real-time. The present, then. It tracked her movements, changing as she acted.

  But the silver runes—the innermost layer—they remained dim, elusive. They were there, but only barely, like the faint outline of something not fully realized.

  Could they represent the future? It seemed impossible to be sure, but the more she thought about it, the more sense it made. The silver runes flickered with uncertainty, not yet fixed, much like the future itself—something always in motion, never set.

  Ebonheim's heart quickened. She wasn't dealing with a simple mechanism. This device, whatever it was, didn't just lock a door or a gate—it locked time itself. Her reflection, the shifting sense of moments dragging and speeding up, the delayed movements of her mirrored self—it all pointed to the same conclusion.

  The construct was manipulating the flow of time, using it as a barrier, a lock she would have to break.

  She turned toward the mirrored wall again, her reflection now solid, its movements once again a few beats behind her.

  The golden runes—the past—those were echoes, things that had already happened. They couldn't be changed. The blue runes, though, moved with her now, the present, responding to every choice she made. And the silver—the future—seemed distant, unreachable.

  But how could she manipulate these things? How could she possibly influence the past or anticipate the future? She didn't have a guide to walk her through any of this, just her instincts and the vague impressions she gleaned from the runes.

  Her mind pressed the Akashic System for an answer, but none came. She sighed and let out an exasperated sigh. Why did everything have to be so hard?

  Time itself was the key, she knew that much now. The runes, the reflections, the strange fluctuations she had experienced—it all fit together in some way, but the logic escaped her.

  If this construct was some sort of lock, she'd have to figure out how to crack the code. If each set of runes were tumblers in a lock that corresponded to her action in time, what did she have to do to unlock it? Where could she find the combination?

  Hopefully not through trial and error.

  Ebonheim winced at the thought. That meant if she got one wrong and couldn't reset the entire puzzle... she could wind up stuck in this place forever. Possibly worse.

  Activating the relevant runes that corresponded to past, present, and future could work. Or perhaps making all three active at once...or setting off all three in an intricate chain reaction. Maybe there were more than three sequences. Wouldn't she need to test all three combinations and identify the differences in the outcomes?

  Ebonheim stared at the construct, her mind spinning in circles. Each option carried risk. One wrong move, and she'd never know.

  After staring at the runes for what seemed like hours, she managed to single out a possible combination. The problem was testing the sequence.

  She stepped back from the construct, her eyes narrowing. The reflections in the mirrored walls kept replaying her movements, delayed, almost mocking her. It was like she was watching her past selves, seeing each moment she had lived just a heartbeat too late. And the future...well, she couldn't see that at all. Yet.

  There was no way to activate the sequence she had in mind. She had no way of changing her past actions to match what the runes needed to activate the correct response. Only the present changed at her whim. Only the blue runes.

  A thought struck her—a wild, desperate idea.

  What if the key wasn't in trying to change what had already happened, but in aligning herself with it? What if, instead of trying to control the flow of time, she had to synchronize with it? But how?