The candle’s flame did not flicker. It stood unnaturally still, a golden needle piercing the darkness, frozen in a moment that had ceased to flow. Around it, the dust hung like suspended snowfall, caught midair in defiance of gravity, each speck held in place by the weight of halted time. The room itself did not breathe, did not shift, did not change. They were far from the limits of the City now, outside its laws, beyond its sight. Here, Sharrzaman’s power stretched unchallenged, and the mortals in this room, despite their influence, were as blind to the truth as anyone else.

  Only Sharrzaman moved.

  As he surveyed the motionless room, a thought clawed its way from the recesses of his mind—an old lesson, an ancient irritation. He could almost hear Krungus’s voice, smug and knowing, reciting that wretched limerick from their youth:

  'A wizard who meddles with time, 'Finds folly disguised as the prime. 'The past is a lie, 'The future won’t die, 'And fate has no rhythm nor rhyme.'

  Sharrzaman’s lip curled in disgust. Krungus had always been insufferable, prattling on about consequences as if wisdom alone could shape the world. What did he know? The past was not a lie—it was a tool. And the future? The future belonged to those strong enough to mold it.

  His robes, woven from night itself, swept across the marble floor as he stepped between the unmoving figures. A long conference table stretched before him, surrounded by beings locked in the illusion of conversation—advisors, warlords, scholars—each caught mid-gesture, their words trapped in the spaces between seconds. Goblets of wine hovered, the liquid frozen mid-pour. The candlelight reflected off sightless eyes, the expressions of his council fixed in expressions of concern, calculation, and, in some cases, fear.

  But not all were still.

  The pixies had gotten to work.

  Tiny, mischievous figures flitted through the frozen air, their wings like hummingbird blurs. They tugged at the advisors' arms, repositioning them, tilting heads at unnatural angles, molding expressions into absurd contortions. One nobleman now pointed at himself in exaggerated horror; another, lips twisted into a silent scream, held up a spilled goblet as though performing a dramatic soliloquy. A few of the pixies clung to the great chandelier above, giggling noiselessly as they adjusted limbs like living marionettes. Sharrzaman did not bother to stop them. None of the Thirteen would be able to see them anyway.

  Sharrzaman watched them briefly, but his attention was elsewhere. Their amusement was inconsequential. The meeting would resume in a moment, and the mortals would never know the indignity they had suffered between breaths.

  He reached the head of the table and examined the largest object present: an intricate hourglass, nearly four feet tall, filled not with sand but with shimmering silver dust. The upper bulb of the glass was nearly full. The lower was almost empty.

  The City of Cities was running out of time.

  Sharrzaman placed a single, deliberate finger on the hourglass and turned it slightly, watching the silver grains shift, their flow momentarily uncertain before settling back into their slow, inevitable descent.

  He had waited long enough.

  Beyond the chamber, in the vast halls of his war machine, time did not flow evenly. The armies that gathered here were horrors built from stolen flesh, grotesque amalgamations of creatures from across the planes. No two were the same—some towered above the others, their bodies stitched together from colossi and dragons, their faces a lattice of jagged bone and mismatched eyes. Others skulked in the shadows, spiderlike, their limbs too long, their flesh layered in shifting chitin. Some bore too many mouths, too many hands, too many pulsing hearts, their bodies an unnatural compromise of anatomy that had no right to exist.

  These were not simple soldiers. They were works of art.

  Sharrzaman strode among them, untouched by the stench of decaying sinew and the twitching of half-living, half-dead limbs. The air was thick with the sounds of movement—the scraping of bone, the wet suction of flesh knitting itself together, the deep, rattling breaths of creatures that had never learned to die properly.

  He stopped before one of the largest among them, a hulking brute nearly twice his height. Its body was a fusion of creatures from a dozen different worlds—massive arms corded with muscle, mismatched hands, one a gnarled claw, the other a fist of stone. Its head was an unsettling patchwork of flesh, the jaw too wide, filled with serrated teeth that did not match. One eye glowed dimly, the other was missing entirely, leaving a gaping socket that pulsed with some lingering force. Jagged plates of bone jutted from its spine, each one shifting slightly as if they had a mind of their own.

  The creature exhaled a deep, guttural growl, its massive chest rising and falling unnaturally, like a bellows struggling to hold breath. Sharrzaman tilted his head, observing it with mild interest. This was a thing built for destruction, a weapon that had no understanding of what it was meant to be. He placed a hand on its chest, feeling the mismatched flesh tremble beneath his palm. It did not flinch, did not react, its presence a monument to the one who controlled them all.

  "A crude thing," Sharrzaman murmured, removing his hand. "But useful."

  The creature did not respond. It simply stood, waiting, existing for no reason beyond the one it had been given. Sharrzaman stepped past it, his interest already fading.

  At the heart of it all, a dais of black stone jutted upward, upon which stood a warlord of his army, a towering, apelike monstrosity with three grotesque heads, each bearing a different malformed snarl. Its thick, matted fur was unevenly patched with stitched skin from unidentifiable creatures, and a series of massive udders hung pendulously from its abdomen, an unnatural fusion of predator and beast of burden. Its jagged claws flexed as it turned toward Sharrzaman, its three sets of eyes burning with hunger, the desire to be unleashed.

  It bowed, a motion that rippled through a thousand different moments at once. Sharrzaman watched, his expression unreadable, though internally, he found himself questioning his second-in-command’s choices. Why in the hell did it have udders? He had seen countless warforms, aberrations sculpted from the flesh of the defeated, but this? This thing looked like it had been cobbled together without a second thought, a mix of overwhelming brutality and sheer absurdity. He shook the thought from his mind. Null’s methods were not his concern, only the results.

  “The City is not ready,” Sharrzaman said.

  The warlord did not move, but the shifting edges of its form trembled. “We have waited long.”

  “And you will wait longer.” Sharrzaman gestured toward the darkened ceiling. “The Weave is not yet thin enough. There is still resistance. When we strike, it must be absolute. There will be no second attack. When the city falls, it falls for good.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The warlord’s voice came as a hiss. “And the old wizard?”

  Sharrzaman’s expression did not change. “Krungus will bury himself. He will not realize the futility of his efforts until it is far too late.”

  The warlord hesitated. “And the others?”

  Sharrzaman let out a quiet chuckle, dismissive, almost bored. “The remnants of The Number? Let them flounder. They are relics of an era that is already dead.” His eyes gleamed as he added, “The only one worth noting is Utopianna. Not for her power, nor her wisdom. I must know if she still follows him.”

  The warlord’s shifting form vibrated, uneasy. “You fear her?”

  Sharrzaman’s lips curled. “Fear? No. Influence is a delicate thing, and Krungus—" he spat the name like a curse, "—has an unfortunate habit of gathering those who should listen to wiser voices.”

  The warlord lingered, shifting uneasily, but pressed no further.

  Sharrzaman turned away. The battle was not here. Not yet. The City of Cities had not yet learned that it was already lost.

  But they would.

  As he walked through the war halls, past the flickering torches casting shadows against grotesque bodies, past the waiting monsters, past the frozen embers of destruction yet to come, Sharrzaman reached into his robes and pulled free a small, broken shard of glass. It shimmered in the dim light, shifting colors, refusing to settle.

  A piece of something impossible.

  A piece of coincidence.

  He rolled it between his fingers and then, with a whisper of a word, scattered it into the air.

  If Eugene would not fall into his grasp willingly, then fate itself would ensure he had no other path to walk.

  The last of the glass dissolved into nothing.

  The candle at the head of the war chamber flickered.

  Sharrzaman turned back to the table of advisors, watching their twisted, manipulated poses with mild amusement. He exhaled a breathless whisper, a thread of sound that curled through the frozen air like an unseen serpent. The sound slithered into the space between seconds, uncoiling the magic that held time still. A sudden shudder passed through the room, subtle yet sharp, and from above, one of the pixies let out a strangled gasp before dropping like a stone, tumbling through the air. It struck the table with a soft thud, unconscious but breathing. None of the advisors noticed. One by one, they blinked back to motion, unaware of the lost moment.

  Time rushed back into the room. The candle’s flame danced. The spilled wine finally splattered onto the table. The advisors sucked in sudden breaths, blinking in mild confusion, shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

  No one noticed the absurdity of their positions at first. A few straightened their limbs, coughed, and resumed their conversations as though nothing had happened. Councilwoman Grint tapped her fingers against the table, none the wiser to what had transpired in the lost moments.

  The Thirteen Obelisks—the true power behind the city's economy, the shadow cabal that even that toucanfolk had only begun to suspect—remained oblivious to the greater forces at play. They believed Sharrzaman was merely their hidden benefactor, an economic mastermind guiding the city's prosperity from the shadows. None of them had the faintest idea that an army of horrors was waiting for The City of Cities, that it teetered on the precipice of annihilation.

  They did not suspect him. They never would.

  And when the time came, they, too, would fall.

  Sharrzaman allowed himself a thin, satisfied smile.

  Councilwoman Grint cleared her throat, tapping her fingers against the table again. "Speaking of which, Lord Sharrzaman, we must revisit the dispute over the trade agreement between the The Emerald Pact of Eternal Trade and the Celestial Order of Coin. They’ve been at odds for some time now, and if we don't intervene, we may find ourselves losing valuable tariffs in the coming fiscal period. I had the time—" she paused, adjusting her spectacles, "—to review their latest negotiations, and I must say, the timing—"

  Sharrzaman’s eye twitched. His fingers tightened subtly around the armrest of his chair. The word scraped against his nerves like a blade dragged across glass.

  Grint, oblivious, droned on. "The timetables they have proposed for resource distribution are wholly inefficient, and given the time-sensitive nature of their shipments, we must ensure that our intervention is—"

  He exhaled slowly, willing himself to maintain composure. It was nothing. Just a coincidence. Just another mortal prattling about matters beneath him. And yet, his pulse quickened, irritation crawling up his spine like an unseen hand.

  The candle flickered, casting strange shadows across the chamber.

  "Councilwoman," he interrupted, voice smooth but firm. "You will compile a summary of your concerns and present them at a later date."

  Grint blinked, startled. "But Lord Sharrzaman, the timing—"

  Something in him snapped.

  Before she could finish, he raised a single finger. The air around Grint warped, shimmering like heat waves on stone. Her breath hitched, eyes widening in sudden terror as her body seized. Time surged forward, ripping through her like a violent tide. Wrinkles etched themselves across her skin in an instant. Her hair whitened, then thinned, then fell in brittle tufts. Her lips cracked, her back arched in pain, bones groaning under the unnatural acceleration.

  The others barely had time to register what was happening. Within seconds, she was nothing more than a husk, her body withering away into dust, collapsing into the chair she once occupied. A single, hollow breath escaped her as she faded into nothingness.

  Above, the remaining pixies let out choked gasps and tumbled from the air, their tiny bodies lifeless but intact, drained beyond use—for now.

  A heavy silence hung in the room. Every advisor had seen it, had watched as their mysterious benefactor erased a colleague from existence in the span of seconds. But none of them spoke. None of them truly understood what had just occurred. They had no name for the force he had wielded, no means to rationalize it. Only one thing was certain—Councilwoman Grint had displeased Lord Sharrzaman, and now she was gone.

  Sharrzaman exhaled, steadying himself. He straightened his posture, smoothing the edges of his composure.

  "The matter is settled," he said, his voice as cold as the void left in Grint’s place. "We will move on."

  "Later," he repeated, sharp enough that even the most obtuse of mortals would understand.

  He rose from his seat and moved toward the hidden stairwell, a long descent winding downward into the darkness. As he walked, his thoughts turned to The Number—not as a whole, but to Na’atasha. Of all of them, she was the one most likely to see reason. Most likely to understand that Krungus's ideals were little more than whimsical delusions. The others were too entrenched, too sentimental, but Na’atasha? She had always been practical. Ruthless, even. If she saw what he had built, what he had ensured would come to pass, perhaps she would make the right choice.

  The stone steps stretched endlessly before him, the air growing colder, thick with something old and patient. He worked through the possibilities in his mind, adjusting calculations, considering contingencies. If she did not come willingly, would coercion be necessary? No, that would be beneath him. He would offer her something greater than whatever misguided loyalty she still clung to—certainty.

  He reached the bottom of the stairs.

  With a flick of his wrist, the chamber before him was bathed in eerie light. He stood in the doorway, gazing upon the cavernous expanse ahead. Rows upon rows of cages lined the walls, stretching into the distance, each one containing a writhing, glowing figure.

  Pixies. Thousands of them.

  Without hesitation, he reached into his robes and produced the drained, lifeless pixies from earlier, tossing them unceremoniously into an open cage. The remaining prisoners stirred, some flinching, some pressing themselves against the bars, their luminescent wings fluttering with instinctive fear. He did not address them. He did not need to.

  From another cage, he withdrew six fresh pixies, their bodies still vibrant with the essence he required. Five of them complied immediately, falling into their expected place, hovering obediently at his side. The sixth, however, lingered. It hesitated, flitting away from the others, its tiny limbs trembling as it struggled against some futile instinct for rebellion.

  Sharrzaman barely sighed before reaching out and closing his fingers around the creature’s delicate form. With a casual twist, he snapped its neck.

  The other five froze in place, their tiny eyes wide with terror. A warning had been given. A precedent set.

  He let the broken body drop to the floor and stepped over it as he turned back toward the stairs. It was necessary. The others would obey now, and that was all that mattered.

  Somewhere deep in his mind, an echo of doubt whispered—but he silenced it before it could take shape.