Laryn blinked against the brilliant white light bursting from the kingdom core. The light faded, leaving a dark afterimage of the obelisk burned into his retinas. He rubbed his eyes. Around him light flared up from the ground, tracing patterns in the sand. These faded away as they spread out.

  A few lines remained, glowing subtly, marking out a large hexagon on the beach.

  A kingdom core interface window appeared in his vision. A message, welcoming him as a new [Ruler] flashed away, then a series of lines of detailed information that didn’t mean much of anything to him. Laryn had encountered a few magical interfaces, but this one overwhelmed him with information, and even a map.

  He glanced over the stats.

  Most of it bounced off of him.

  The runic text suggested that the core could give him power over time. He scanned through the interface, looking for a way to activate that kind of power.

  A cheery, female voice greeted him.

  “Sorry, one moment, okay, the [Temporal Thinking Space] is online. Wow, it’s been a while. Might take me a bit to finish consolidating, so you aren’t going to be able to see me… Oh well, we’ll do a proper introduction later. This will work for now. Hi, I’m the Administrator! Gee, you look terrible, what happened to you?”

  Laryn touched the wound in his side, which no longer hurt. The blood stopped dripping from the gash in his arm. Ripples in the water had frozen, and the clouds did not move across the sky.

  All around him, time stood still.

  “Power over time?” Laryn said, his mouth dry. He didn’t find anything that seemed promising in the interface.

  “Yep,” the Administrator said. “This is a [Temporal Thinking Space]. Stops time for you to let you collect yourself and make a decision.”

  Hope welled up inside him. The magical kingdom core projected power across the land, stopping the flow of time. He could hardly believe what was happening. Did this mean… would he be able to…

  “Praise Ishtoran,” Laryn muttered, dismissing the interface windows.

  “Oh gosh, pardon me,” the Administrator said. “It’s been so long I’ve forgotten my manners. What is your name?”

  “I’m Laryn,” he said.

  “Laryn! That’s a great name. I’m glad you’re here. It’s so boring hanging out by myself inside that box, you know. Well, let’s get started with the tutorial.”

  “Honored spirit of the core, I need to rewind time,” Laryn said. “My brother he... he’s hurt badly. Can we go back? Can we reverse it back to before we crossed the river? I read the glyphs which said this core could give me power over time.”

  “My, you’re eager to jump right in, aren’t you! You don’t even want the tutorial first?”

  “Can it wait?”

  “I guess,” the Administrator said. She sounded disappointed. “Um, let me see, special ability to rewind time… Okay, here’s the map of your possessions.”

  The windows in Laryn’s vision shifted, bringing up a detailed map segmented into hexagons.

  “On a fresh, unpowered activation, the core claims the central hextile and each adjacent one, for a total of seven,” the perky female explained. “To reverse time, you need to sacrifice part of your claim. You can’t unclaim the core’s tile, so that gives you six tiles.”

  “I want to go back to this morning,” Laryn said. “I don’t care about claimed tiles. Whatever it takes.”

  “Oh, um… that won’t work.”

  “What do you mean?” Laryn asked, dread creeping in around the edges. He rubbed his hands over his scalp, swallowing thickly. “Great soul of the core.” He added the honorific, trying not to offend the being.

  She laughed. “No need to call me that. I’m just the Administrator. I work for you.”

  “Okay,” Laryn said. “So, can you help me?”

  “There’s a limit on your time reverse ability—”

  “How much?” Laryn asked, voice rising in pitch. “I’ll use it all. We don’t have to go back to this morning, just, back before Keldin was hurt. Back to the river crossing? Before the voidlings attacked us. If we can just go back to the river crossing, we will stop there. We won’t cross. Please, I need your help, honor—Administrator.”

  “I don’t know how long ago that was,” she said. “but it sounds like it’s been a while. You can only hop back in time by one second for every tile you sacrifice. You have six.”

  “Six?” Laryn repeated. “Six seconds… is it? That’s all I can do?”

  “I’m sorry,” the Administrator said. “Six seconds back from the moment you activated the [Temporal Thinking Space]. Our discussion now doesn’t count.”

  The words struck Laryn like a blow to the gut. He crumpled to his knees, splashing down into the strange, time frozen water at his feet. Droplets sprayed up into the air around him, then slowed to a stop, hanging like glittering diamonds.

  Six seconds? That was it? He needed… hours. A couple of hours at least. To be so close, and yet so far…

  “Here,” the Administrator said. “A visualization you can use; to decide how far back you want to go.” A small window appeared alongside a map, showing a top down view of Laryn kneeling beside the kingdom core. He gestured with his mind, and scrubbed back through the six seconds just before he’d activated the core.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Laryn watched as he moved in reverse, a strange, eerie feeling.

  He observed himself pull the erected core down on top of himself. The display showed him line the wound on his arm up with the sharp tip of the core, and, as he pushed the core away, the broken skin and torn shirt sealed up behind it.

  The image of him popped up to his feet, flipping the base of the core back into the broken chest, and then dropped the tip back down into place and retreated, standing appraisingly.

  Six seconds. That was as far back as he could go. That was how long he’d spent hauling the core out of the chest.

  “Also I should tell you, the core won’t be affected by your ability. Even if you rewind all six seconds, it won’t go back into the box. It’ll stay right where you placed it. That gash on your arm will go away though!"

  Laryn groaned. He stared across the beach to where his brother lay. He hadn’t checked the body yet. Maybe…

  “What other powers can I use?” he asked. “Healing? This is a Conqueror’s Core, right? I need legendary powers!” Laryn looked around for the woman who called herself ‘the Administrator,’ but she was nowhere to be seen.

  “Oh, I’m glad you asked. You get buffs to your constitution, strength, and magic affinity as you capture more land, so—”

  “No… No! I need something for him!” Laryn pointed at his brother. What he worried might be his brother’s corpse.

  “The ability to reverse time and retry is incredibly powerful,” the Administrator said. “Don’t discount it.”

  “I need to go back in time at least an hour,” Laryn said. “Probably two. We were ambushed by voidlings just after we crossed the river. If I can get back to the river crossing… We were having a discussion about it, we almost didn’t cross. We shouldn’t have. He’d still be alive.” As Laryn spoke, realization dawned on him.

  “This core,” he said, “it’s not enough? We stumbled into that pack of voidlings before… If I could go back two hours…” He did the math in his head. “That’s… more than four great gross seconds (nearly 7000). How can I claim more tiles? Could I get that many?”

  “Yes, you totally can. You can claim a lot more tiles than that. You just have to collect raw materials, use [Sift] to reduce them to their elemental essence, and provide that to the core. That will increase the core’s influence level, allowing you to capture more hextiles!”

  Laryn groaned. He felt everything slipping away from him. “You’re talking about a process that will take time.”

  “Yep!”

  “So every minute I spend claiming a tile is another five dozen tiles I need to claim, just to break even.”

  “That’s right! Oh… I’m so sorry. You’re probably not going to be able to rewind time very far past your activation of the core. I’ve worked with a few different rulers over the years, and I don’t think…” her voice trailed off, fading as though she had walked into a different room.

  “Yep,” she said, voice loud again. “I just checked the records, and none of them ever grew their kingdom fast enough to rewind time to a point before they activated their core. Oohh, if you did it right now, you could be the first one!”

  “You’re useless to me,” Laryn said. “I never should have activated the core. I thought that you might be able to help us.”

  “Well, I can help you! That’s what the powers are for! Like that nasty gash you have on your arm, which you received just under four seconds ago. Quick time rewind ought to help with that.”

  Laryn reviewed the replay of the last six seconds of his life, leading up to the activation of the kingdom core.

  “He could still be alive,” Laryn said, hopelessly. “I need to check on him. Treat his wounds.” He tried to move toward his brother’s figure, but as he stepped away from the kingdom core, the air thickened around him, and his movements slowed.

  “Oh, um, you can’t walk over there while your [Temporal Thinking Space] is activated. Want me to turn it off?”

  “No!” Laryn exclaimed, still looking at his brother. “I still need to think. So time is no longer passing?”

  “Not while you’re here, beside the core. It’s a helpful feature that lets you plan strategically without being put under pressure. Pause, take a breather, work out your next move. But you can’t really do anything while you’re here either. And you have to stay by the core, until your kingdom reaches tier two and you unlock the [Temporal Thinking Space] spell. And there’s a limit on it too. You’ve nearly drained the capacity, so the space will start to disintegrate in a moment.”

  “Is that bad? It sounds bad.”

  “No, it’s just the thing turning off by itself. Are you ready? Here it goes. Did you want to do a time rewind?”

  “Yes!” Laryn said. “I do.” He found the location just before he’d slashed his arm open with the core. Four seconds back. "Here,” he said.

  “Great, choose the tiles you’re sacrificing,” the Administrator prompted. He selected four random tiles on the map.

  “Activating.”

  The core pulsated, light washing off it in blinding sheets. Laryn’s skin tingled and the world rippled around him, like a reflection in the water. His body moved backward through the motions he had taken, struggling to lift the kingdom core, falling to the ground with it atop him.

  The sensation of moving backward through time was made stranger by the absence of the kingdom core he’d been wrestling. It remained firmly in place on the beach.

  Then he stood beside the smashed chest, blinking. His arm no longer hurt; the wound was gone. He stumbled, his body braced against the weight of a kingdom core that he no longer held. The obelisk stood behind him, where he had erected it. No, that was wrong. It stood where he was about to put it, somehow unaffected by the time rewind ability.

  Laryn splashed through the shallow water, feet churning the sand, wound in his side burning. He reached the place where Keldin lay in the dirt, and knelt beside him.

  Keldin’s skin was cold to the touch. He felt at his brother’s neck for a pulse, and found what he had expected. Nothing but lifeless flesh.

  Laryn’s heart sank. “No,” he whispered. He slumped forward over Keldin’s form, trembling.

  “What?” the Administrator asked. “Did you say something to me?”

  “No,” Laryn replied, looking around. He didn’t see anyone, and wondered where her voice came from. “Leave me alone.”

  The words tasted bitter falling from his lips. This moment was supposed to be exciting, inspiring. He and Keldin should have been celebrating the birth of their new kingdom together.

  He turned back to Keldin’s body and bowed his head. He was too weak, too numb and exhausted to even shed a tear.

  “Ishtoran keep his soul,” he muttered. He would perform the proper rites. He had seen friends die in battle before. But this defeat, when he had hoped so fervently that he had found a way to cheat death… it crushed him. What was he supposed to do now?

  Something at the back of his mind wanted to believe that it might still be possible for him to fix this. What had the Administrator said? It could be possible to reverse time enough to save his brother, if he grew the power of the Kingdom Core enough?

  He knew it for a false hope. What else did he have?

  “Mourn for the dead. Honor their loss with your sorrow.” He muttered the lines from the song of mourning, his heart wrenching within him.

  He wept, tears dripping down onto Keldin’s cold cheeks.

  For a long time Laryn knelt, cool river water lapping at his legs, until he’d exhausted his capacity to feel.

  “I’m sorry Keldin,” he said. “You’ve given your life for this kingdom already. I had hoped to build something better.”

  Exhausted emotionally and physically, with his legs cramping from the cold, Laryn dragged Keldin’s corpse out of the shallow water and up onto the beach. He laid the body in the sand, where it would not be reached even if rainwater swelled the river.

  From the wreckage of the wagon, Laryn recovered some ointment, cord, and strips of cloth. He moved through the motions, preparing the body for burial.

  As he worked he wept. His tears dripped down onto the cloth as he bound it around his brother, securing it with cords. He looked for Keldin’s cudgel, but could not find it among the wreckage.

  His sword had also gone missing.

  Laryn had brought this upon himself. He wanted to be a [Ruler]. To show that even though he’d been born as second son, he could do the job of a first son. If he was right, and he succeeded in growing his kingdom, then he might be able to claim enough tiles to undo Keldin’s death.

  Besides, the hope was distant. It would be incredibly hard for him to grow a kingdom large enough, fast enough to save Keldin.

  “You should have lain in the sepulcher of our fathers,” Laryn whispered. “Your memory honored there forever, alongside the great heroes of our line.”

  “Excuse me.”

  Laryn jumped out of his skin as he noticed the person approaching him from the corner of his eye.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt,” she said. “I know you told me to leave you alone—”

  Laryn gaped. He recognized the voice; it clearly belonged to the Administrator. He hadn’t expected her to appear in physical form.

  "Oh, geeze, I’m sorry to startle you,” she said. “But something is coming.”