Page 73 of Revert
A flicker of tension pulled at his jaw as his gaze pinned me in place. “You will not win, girl. You may see the threads, but you cannot hold them. They will cut you, collapse you. You do not understand what it means to bear time and command it.” His smile was cold and fractured, like a man who already believed he’d won. “But I do, and I will unravel everything you’ve done—again and again—until you beg to forget.”
His smile was cold and fractured, eyes narrowing to slits of fire, like a man who already believed he’d won. He lifted the sigil from around his neck as he turned towards the hourglass, his lips beginning to form the spell that would revert time again.
Before he could finish, steel met steel with a resounding clash. The chamber exploded into motion as Castiel lunged, his blade singing through the charged air. The king spun to meet him without hesitation, sword flashing in a practiced arc—every strike precise, brutal, and unrelenting.
Sparks danced as their weapons collided again and again, the sound ringing off the stone walls. Castiel moved with the desperation of an untamed storm, but the king was colder, every movement sharpened by centuries of repetition.
This wasn’t father against son—it was a protector defending love, a sovereign extinguishing rebellion.
I stood frozen at the heart of the chamber, surrounded by glowing threads and suspended hourglass light. Castiel fought for me, buying precious seconds—but for all his skill I knew he couldn’t last. The king was older, but fought with the precision of someone who had rewound time until perfection was second nature. He anticipated Castiel’s counters, dodging his feints like he’d seen them a thousand times before.
I couldn’t waste Castiel’s sacrifice. Frantically, I turned back to the threads—trying to unravel them, to pull the broken ones taut, to rewind what I could. But every knot I loosened revealed two more beneath it. For every injustice I tried to undo, another rippled out in consequence.
A sob of despair broke from my throat; there was too much. Too many lives and tragedies, too many timelines that had splintered, diverged, overlapped. The king had done this for decades—maybe centuries—cutting, splicing, starting again. What had once been a straight thread of time had compounded to become a web of tangled light.
I couldn’t fix it all in time. And even if I did, what would stop the king from reweaving the threads as he chose, once he reverted time?
Behind me, Castiel grunted in pain as the king’s blade caught his shoulder. He stumbled, barely blocking the next blow.
My breath hitched.No. Without thinking, I reached for the threads again. My hand closed around one glowing strand and yanked, this time not to fix, but to slow.
The chamber shivered as magic surged, the walls rippling like water. Time didn’t stop, but staggered. The sounds of the sword fight dulled to a warped murmur. Movements slowed into something dreamlike—Castiel mid-lunge, the king mid-parry, their blades frozen just before the next clash.
Around me, the threads spiraled in slow motion, drifting like galaxies across a darkened sky. I stood in the eye of the storm—alone in the silence, time stretched so thin I could almost hear it breathe.
I released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I had given myself more time. And with it slowed, I could finally see what had been difficult to discern before: the timelines were changing, shifting as if alive. My hands trembled as I brushed strand after strand, visions blooming around me like constellations unfolding. But unlike before when I had only seen the end result, this time I had a view of the full picture.
A rebellion that failed in one thread but inspired peaceful reform in the next. A betrayal that led to exile—only for the exile to become a healer in a land that would have burned without her. My own death, once a tragedy, had become the spark that awakened Castiel’s resistance and had drawn me back here.
I stumbled back, breath catching in my throat at the realization.If I undo all of it to fix it…what else would I erase?Not just pain, but growth. Not just sorrow, but hope.
Even chapters of our love story, ones that seemed dark at first glance, but had made the good moments all the brighter…like the garden of daffodils emerging from the ruins, the longing that had pulled us together again and again in every life. Love that had never been born from safety, but forged in the ashes of broken timelines and impossible choices.
Even if I found a way to trap the king, I couldn’t undo everything, not without destroying the very future we were fighting to protect or losing the beauty that had grown from the brokenness. Perhaps fixing time had never been the point, but allowing every event that had transpired across every life to shape me, enabling us to create a brighter future.
I turned towards the suspended hourglass, is shimmery sands pulsing with possibility.No more loops, no more erasing. This time, we change only the ending, not the beginning.
The choice settled in my chest, fierce and quiet: I would trap the king in the timeline he could no longer control, without undoing the love that had bloomed in the cracks.
I stood before the suspended hourglass, my fingers still tingling from where I’d slowed the flow of time. The magic pulsed, slow and steady as a heartbeat, waiting to be claimed. Around me, the threads hummed, straining under the weight of too many choices and too many stitched wounds.
Behind me, Castiel and the king remained frozen in that suspended moment—Castiel’s face set with fierce determination, the king’s with the cold certainty of conquest—two fates poised for impact.
This is the moment everything changes.
I stepped forward, my gaze lifting to the inscription now etched into the hourglass:He who bends time too long shall be bound by it.
The hourglass shone again, not merely a weapon or conduit, but a safeguard etched into the very fabric of time, a warning that the king had recklessly disregarded.
“He’s broken the rules,” I whispered. “Now time will bind him by them.” But for that to happen…he had to be cut loose.
I turned back towards the tangled threads. Each one vibrated with a soft hum, like a harp string waiting to be plucked. One stood out, an anchor thread I recognized as the king’s—thick with control, stained with blood, and coiled into every fate it touched. It spread from the hourglass like a golden chain, grotesque in its dominion.
This was what kept him tethered to every timeline and reset—a revelation born from instinct, just like the magic that had awakened within me. The vision of the Chronomancer and her golden scissors rippled through my mind. If I severed that thread…then perhaps the failsafe would trigger and time would recoil. And with no anchor left to return to, the hourglass would trap him in the one timeline he couldn’t escape: his last.
Hundreds of threads of light shimmered before me as I lifted my hands, extending to the king’s anchor. Within it, I saw everything—the moments the king had touched, the ones he’d erased, the ones he’d rewritten to suit his will. But one thread—dark and fraying at its edges—pulled at me like a curse, looping again and again until it was nearly ash.
This one.
