Prologue:

  Not with a bang, or with a boom, but with the weirdly gentle image of the sky bleeding open. That’s how the world ended, at least for all the people who would continue living on it. The thing just sort of oozed down in rainbow hues and motes of mana so thick they were basically liquid. Then, beyond the shimmering gash the sky had become, there were ships. Strange looking things, just lurking there. Waiting. Beneath them Eli stood surrounded by the wreckage of civilization. Watching that awful peeling wrent in reality with a sense of dread and finality.

  Blood covered his hands. His reservoirs were gone. He’d lost the first in the first war. That was before the world knew just how ugly things were going to get. His second and third had passed in the third war. This final battle had just taken the last. His allies were gone, smashed beneath the combined might of the Families and their vastly superior armies and technology. Every mana crystal was crushed and used, every muscle ached, everywhere he looked was in ruin. He was spent, the home he loved would be taken and exploited for all it was worth by the invaders from beyond the sky and the Families.

  The Families. Standing arrayed in front of him was battalion after battalion of their collective might. They had come in force, not because all of them were needed, but to make a point. ‘Were bigger than you, we’re stronger than you and you never really stood a chance’. On some level, everyone who had mounted resistance in the desperate struggle for freedom had understood that. This was a battle they were never really going to win. But they’d had to fight. Everyone on that battlefield truly had to fight. Eli was still on that battlefield. Sure, he was basically just a spent husk at this point, but so long as he was standing, he had to try.

  So what if he was out of mana, that was no excuse to stop fighting. He just needed enough for a spark. Enough to ignite his own core and prepare for the inevitable magical backlash. Just enough for a spark, just a spark.

  From seemingly nowhere, he felt a trickle of familiar power. It wasn’t much, the feeling was faint and the connection weak, but one of the many reservoirs had survived, and this one knew him. Aria. She was just hanging on to life, her hair disheveled and her face covered in the detritus of war, the proof of their resistance. But she had enough energy and strength to share her mana with him. They had worked with each other enough over the years that he had a sense for her energy. They had become close enough that this just might work. Reaching out, he connected to her, and at that moment they both knew, her offering would not be in vain.

  He looked over, and the look on her face matched the rage, the burning fury and hate of his own. They wanted the same thing. Victory was out of reach… but revenge? She looked like she would survive out of spite if she could get him what he needed to take them all out, along with the city, and probably the surrounding towns too.

  Eli was nothing if not powerful, and he was talented enough to do with a single mote of mana what others would waste buckets on. Even better, he had both time and space mana as his major affinities. Looking into the sky, watching the aliens as they watched back, probably sipping their cocktails and waiting for Vereth to be handed to them on a platter, Eli grinned. Bloody, broken, and at the end of his rope but as the time magic built up, he couldn’t help but smile as he ignited his own core.

  And then he exploded.

  It was theorized that particularly powerful mages igniting their own cores was how certain geographical landmarks were created. It was truly a technique of last resort and mass destruction. The pain of ignition was so immense that many simply passed out when they tried it, burned out from the inside by their own mana turned against them. To push a person to that point, to the point where someone was willing to endure that level of pain while maintaining such control, it was said to be a crime of the highest order because the cascade of destruction was always immensely catastrophic. It’s one of the reasons that mages were so highly respected, and so highly feared.

  Eli wasn’t there to watch the cascade of death his overload would’ve caused, but the backlash of time magic resulted in an event he would never have foreseen happening.

  After the explosion, after pushing past the breaking point and the pain just to know that his passing had wiped out most of the Families’ armies, there was none of the expected pain or darkness, neither heat nor the frigid embrace of death. There was just, kind of, nothing. Then he opened his eyes. Small, he felt smaller. Why that was the first thought he had he couldn’t say, but his body felt so different. He breathed in, and the air tasted different. He couldn’t even explain what was different about it, but everything was just strange?

  Looking around he was in his childhood bedroom. Confused, he just took everything in. The doors were exactly as he remembered, same blanket, same bed frame and canopy covering it, even the same beat up old wooden training staff he’d used for shadow practice by himself all that time ago. Then it hit him. Time, he’d used both space and time aspect mana to overload his core. Was he? There was no way. If this was the afterlife then it was a weird place to be, but what if he was really back?

  Running out of the room to check for his parents he almost instantly slammed into a body.

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  “Eli, what have we said about running in the- Eli!” His mother’s warmth, and scent. His mother’s strong arms wrapped all the way around him. His mother’s voice as she echoed familiar reminders about running in the residential wing of the keep’s manor. How many years? Just how many years had it been since he’d last heard her speak, last felt her hands stroking soothing patterns through his hair. It had been over a century since the last time he saw her. Then she was stiff, cold, a final glimpse before the funeral pyre.

  “Mother.” He just stood and hugged her.

  “Hey,” she pushed him away a little to check what was wrong. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, I just love you.” He said, stepping back into her welcoming if confused embrace.

  “Oh?” He could hear the smile in her voice. It was a beautiful sound that he promised himself he’d appreciate more this time around. “I love you too, my little star. I was actually just coming to get you. You ready for our lessons?”

  He’d completely forgotten. He wanted to laugh. He could probably teach his mom a thing or two about magic now, but dutifully he followed her down the hall. He’d loved their lessons together the first time around and promised he’d love them this time too.

  “Hey mum, what’s the date?”

  “We’re on the 15th of Virda. Why?”

  “I meant… Never mind”

  “You’re so peculiar sometimes, my son.” His mother shook her head as she led him to her study.

  Based on what lesson they were on he’d be able to roughly gauge which year he had sent himself to. There was a lot about this time that blurred into the hodgepodge of impressions, routines, and activities he bundled together and labeled ‘childhood’. Quickly checking the notes from the day before he was able to sort of get a feel for the time he was in. It took a while to dig out the memories of so long ago, and when he did, he nearly gasped out loud.

  Three hundred years. Three hundred. If they were in Virda that would put him at seven years old now. He sat with that reality in his mind before snapping himself out of it. He didn’t have time for that now. Or maybe he did? 300 years, and the first true incursions wouldn’t happen for decades still. But that didn’t mean things weren’t happening already. He knew the Families had been contacted generations before the first incursions, and that they were receiving external communications and aid already. He was an unknown entity right now, but he wouldn’t be for long.

  If he was seven years old now that meant he had a bit of time. Time before testing day: that was when artificial awakenings of all unawakened children were done, followed by the aptitude tests. It was mandatory for all the youth who turned 10 during the window to attend testing day, noble and commoner alike. Then, even though his information would be kept private, that was only relevant for most people, the Families had their own ways of getting information. Sure, he had ways to hide his true strength from the prying magic of the testing stone, but there were some things he wouldn’t hide, not unless he wanted to estrange himself from his family and cripple his future development.

  That was unacceptable.

  So, at best, he had three true years of moderate anonymity. Just a backwater 4th step noble; strong? Sure, but unremarkable. Nobody special, nothing to see here.

  Would three years be enough time to set things in motion, maybe. No not maybe, definitely. He would get his revenge. But would it be revenge if it never happened? Perhaps he could stop the takeover from even happening. The families didn’t know of him yet, they hadn’t taken Aria yet. Nobody in the sleepy little border town his parents insisted on administrating from was on anybody’s radar. He had three years before the public testing, and then he’d be a known entity to the academy, and the powers that be by default.

  Then there was Aria. The skies wept magic, the air acrid with smoke and mana residue. His everything ached, his energy was spent, and there at the edge of oblivion was a lifeline. A thin tendril of power freely offered at the end.

  Aria, his friend, his ally, his confidant, but never just his. But he could change that too.

  Of all the things about this absurd situation that caught him off guard, it was this simple fact that caused his mind to go blank. In fact, he zoned out long enough that his mother stopped lecturing to check if he was still paying attention.

  Aria was still alive, still out there. She was close enough that he could just walk to her house. He could save her. Heck he could bond her first before she even got to the academy.

  “Sorry mum, I’m paying attention, what was the question again?”

  “Mana manipulation and meditation techniques. The common ones and then I want you to write down what specific meditations are currently recommended for different affinities, both for solo mages and for those bonded with at least one reservoir.”

  As he listed off the ones he remembered he couldn’t help but consider his plans. He could stop some of the deals and arrangements before they even happened. Others he could probably sabotage. He knew the Families. He needed a plan, or at least an outline.

  “Outline for now, plan later.” He muttered to himself as he completed the exercise, having to stop a few times to make sure he wasn’t listing any methods that had yet to be invented. He was particularly proud of the fact that technically his own method could be on that list.

  First step Aria. He needed her on his side. If he could bond with her early, so much more would be possible. She was an insane fount of mana, who had also ended up being his best friend. He also needed to start training to expand his channels. He should also begin training her early.

  He also needed money. Lots of money. He had the knowledge to get it, but not the means, not yet. He’d have to change that. He also needed to get better at martial combat. How many times over the years had he been hindered, limited or almost killed because his martial foundations were so far behind his magical ones? What happens when your reservoir is murdered before a battle? When the mana is thin, or your channeling is suppressed? He was a good fighter, yes, but he was a much, much better mage. There was almost no comparison, and it had cost him.

  No more. The discrepancy was unacceptable, especially with his father being who he was.

  As his list got longer and longer – both on the page, and in his head – he realized that while he may have traveled back over 300 years, if he truly wanted to get ahead of the tragic future he’d lived through he had absolutely no time to waste.