Page 68 of Revert
He sighed. “But the primary rule behind the timeline magic is one cannot speak of any of the reverts or alterations outside of this room. All I’ve been able to do is use what I’ve learned across the timelines to stay one step ahead—waiting for the moment I could finally share the truth with you. Hoping that together, we might find the way out… just like we almost did the first time. Yet now that we’ve reached the end of my knowledge, I’m lost, without any idea of where to even begin.”
The words stirred something deep within me, a flicker of remembrance just beyond reach, like a name I almost knew. As if in response to this almost recollection, the enchantment filling the chamber stirred. I watched as a sliver of magic twisted, disappearing into a room that lay beyond our sight containing memories I hadn’t yet explored, additional secrets patiently awaiting my discovery.
CHAPTER 19
Anticipation threaded with the strange magic that shimmered around as we stepped deeper into the gallery, an enchantment filled not only with the hush of memory, but the weight of secrets, hidden just beneath the surface of recollection, waiting to be discovered.
With a steadying breath, I gathered my resolve and moved forward, finally ready to face the mysteries that had haunted me ever since stepping foot in this dark court.
The memories came to meet me as I passed through rows of recollections and fragments—translucent panes displaying surveillance reports, maps, and intercepted conversations. A spider’s web of gathered intelligence, coded and scattered across the palace in secret: tucked behind a loose tile in the garden wall, hidden beneath a vase in the conservatory, stitched into the hem of a discarded gown.
My breath caught in my throat. “These are my findings, notes I left for myself from the lives I lived.”
Each fragment had once seemed isolated, meaningless. I’d collected them piece by piece, only to lose them with every reset. All the stagnancy and frustration finally made sense—I hadn’t failed, but had been sabotaged by time itself.
But here in this museum of time and memory, nothing had been erased. The chamber hadn’t just gathered my work, but preserved every detail I’d uncovered, every whisper, every clue. All the evidence was arranged now in intricate, overlapping threads, a tapestry far more complete than anything I could’ve managed in a single timeline.
Castiel stood beside me, his gaze sweeping the chamber, eyes wide with something close to reverence. “I knew fragments of your mission, details gathered as I watched you across the timelines we experienced. But I never realized the full extent of all you’ve accomplished, how close you’d come.”
His awe enfolded me as I stared at the information I’d painstakingly gathered, progress I hadn’t realized I’d made.
For so long I’d thought myself powerless, ineffective. But I had been working against an enemy who had rewritten time to correct his every mistake, erase every truth I uncovered, leaving me constantly several steps behind. But each of His Majesty’s infinite redos had given me more time to watch, to wait, to gather…giving me a lifetime’s worth of information now. Was it enough to finally take him down, to stop his tyranny?
I turned back to the constellation of memories, heart pounding with new urgency. Flickers of court banquets where I secretly met with a key figure. Stolen meetings in empty corridors. Whispered exchanges in the garden. Moments that seemed mundane in isolate that now pulsed with weight and meaning.
One thread glowed brighter than the rest, tugging at me, soft as a whisper to come closer. The projection unfolded as I stepped closer, blooming outward until it enveloped me completely, a moment more than a memory. As though time itself had parted to let me reenter the scene not as an observer, but as someone reliving the moment I’d once forgotten. I turnedin a slow circle, marveling as I became part of a life-sized, living scene.
A figure cloaked in midnight robes stood in a moonlit alcove in the west wing, the contact I had met countless times, never with the same face twice. A nameless ally, voice masked by glamour, face blurred in memory. I had never fully trusted my contact, though they had passed me message after message under the guise of casual conversation, each interaction imparting different information.
I had assumed this was just another informant, but now…I wasn’t sure. Knowing that the story of the hourglass had been a lie, I could only wonder who was really behind the daring attempt to steal the king’s power. I peered towards the figure’s face, willing it to clear…but the scene shifted.
This time they stood by a window, light fractured across their cloak, voice low as they imparted a coded phrase I hadn’t understood:“What the king crowns as throne is no seat at all—but the dial beneath the veil, its hands unseen, ticking backward at his command.”
I inhaled sharply. I had discovered the truth before, perhaps more than once. But each time, it had been erased, forgotten with the reset.
The memory dissolved, only for another to rise. A secluded drawing room, a chessboard scattered across a side table, its pieces midway through a game. The same voice again—this time disguised as a court tutor during a supposed strategy lesson. Adept fingers moved a pawn.
“A game must end by the player’s hand.” They moved another piece, this time a rook. “No piece may force checkmate unless the king believes he moved it himself.”
“The contact was speaking in code,” I murmured, my voice dry in my throat.
Castiel moved closer beside me, his gaze narrowed on the shimmered scene as the fragments shifted and rearranged. “It sounds like the king’s connection to the magic he’s manipulated depends on his belief that he’s in control.”
I nodded slowly, the realization threading through me. “Yet magic is a force that possesses no master. If that’s the case…we might be able to use his pride to spring some sort of trap.”
My mind whirled with possibilities, but more fragments flickered across the chamber like fireflies, distracting my focus—a book, its margins scrawled with ciphered scribbles; a dance invitation with a phrase written in invisible ink, visible only under certain moonlight; a whispered confrontation I didn’t remember, the contact gripping my wrist with urgency:
“He wears the crown, but forgets the clock was wound by older hands,ticking backward…but not at his command.”
A quiet garden bench, where I watched myself kneel and pull a folded scrap of parchment from beneath a planter of winter violets. My gloved hands unfolded it carefully to reveal another message:“He dances ever backward across the same floorboards, each footstep a replica. To the rest, it is a march. To him, a waltz returned to the first note.”
Clue after clue, overwhelming me like a cascade, threading one cryptic fragment to the next. Until I reached the final recollection of myself hunched in the corner of the royal library, fingers trembling as I flipped through a forbidden tome, the pages bearing the sigil whose symbol I had seen scattered across the palace and timelines. Symbols shifted on the page, illuminating the runes glowing with quiet power:Reverto refuto dominus—to revert the master’s command.
My thoughts spun as I stepped away from the final constellation of memories. The tapestry of my forgotten investigation lay open before me, and still I wasn’t entirely sure how to assemble the scattered pieces into the image theyformed. Gradually, I could feel it coming into focus, as if time itself was folding in, tightening around a single point…even as what it pointed to still remained unclear.
I turned to Castiel, hoping for some insight I might have overlooked, but he looked just as perplexed and frustrated as I felt. “No matter how much we try to uncover, there always seems to be something missing…as though time reverses whenever we’re within reach of the discovery. What are we missing?”
As if the enchanted chamber had been awaiting our question, the magic filling it suddenly shifted. A pulse of light vibrated along the far wall, illuminating where the constellation threads had faded to darkness, as if the room had purposely concealed them until the time came to unveil them.
