A boy crawled out from underneath a corpse, like a beetle emerging from under a stone. All around him the grass of the desert savanna had been scorched down to a fine, irritating layer of ash, rising each time the wind blew. The tents and huts in which his people had lived were collapsed into piles of embers, crackling, eyes of flame still seething underneath the blackened remains.

It was all gone.

His world had ended.

Bodies lay facedown, the ash and the sand below drinking their blood. White-fletche arrows sprouted from their backs.

Nic saw all this from a ghostly point of observation, but more importantly, he heard and felt the boy's thoughts. They were awash in guilt. A deep, soul-poisoning self-hatred was growing as he walked the fields of the dead, legs weak beneath him and lost in his own thought.

He had stolen a treasure.

He had angered the Wild-River Palace Tribe.

He had survived.

There was no justice. Only pain and death he had brought to those he loved, those who had done no wrong. His ambition and pride...

His foolishness...

There were other survivors. Others who had hidden or played dead, their faces streaked with ash. He paid them no mind. He no longer belonged to them, to the living.

His place was with the dead.

As the others left, he remained, crouched among the destruction. He ate bitter grass and insects, and walked. All day and every day he walked the edges of the great scar on the fields, until the burnt grass grew back in, and all that remained was the trail cut by his walking...

A midnight horse came over the horizon. An old man rode atop the black stead, a twig of grass hanging from his lips. He had his hair tied back in a messy bun, and blade in a red scabbard patterned with purple lilies hung from his belt.

As he reached the boy he dismounted.

Nic could not hear his voice, but he understood what was said.

He'd heard there was a ghost that walked these plains.

He'd come here to lay it to rest.

The boy knelt and offered him the ring. Train me, he asked, as the wind bent the grass low. I will have rest when I have vengeance.

The old man laughed.

The ring was worthless. Vengeance was worthless. He had come because the boy was worth something, if only a little.

The boy and the old man departed together.

Nic's ghostly view remained. The sky spun through days and nights, winters and summers. With a dream-like blur time passed and the world grew wilder, frost racing across the grass only to recede as spring flowers blossomed up.

---

After lifetimes...

The boy returned. He was no longer young, his hair drawn back into a tight, braided knot. Scars streaked his arms and he wore a mask of ash. A blade in a red scabbard patterned with purple lilies hung at his side.

He dropped down from his horse, removed its saddle and bags, and gave the beast a quick strike on the flanks to set it in motion. Their paths parted here.

He began to walk, his hand on his sword. He began to think.

His steps carved the grass down underfoot. A familiar circle began to form, not a footstep out of line with how it had been, so many years ago. His body remembered. His mind had never left.

He walked in that same circle for a year and a season, eating from a small gourd of pills and drinking rainwater.

When the pills were gone, he sat down and prepared to die.

He had long ago received his vengeance. The enemy tribe was not merely gone, but forgotten.

The guilt remained.

Kneeling, he bowed his head to the four directions, and began to meditate.

Once again the skies sped into motion.

Wind, snow, and rain lashed against his body, grass growing across his legs, but he did not move. His mind was on the past.

He remembered his childhood. He remembered it so vividly, with such desire, that illusions drifted through the air. His memories were written onto the world in light and echoing sound.

Over the course of a year those memories grew more and more realized, more and more clear...

Until they shrank inwards and became a single, floating shard of ash-gray crystal.

A new memory began. A new year.

In time it formed another hovering crystal.

One by one, the man replayed every memory of his long, long life. Good and bad, sweet and bitter. In truth, it was mostly the latter.

But the memories of his childhood were bright and full of sun.

As the years passed, crystalline growths appeared on his skin. As the wind and time conspired to steal the clothing from his shoulders, his skin grew into splinters of pink and spears of ash-gray. He became a statue.

The world continued to turn.

The sky around him was full of crystals, full of memories. They began to join together. To grow. A living landscape of many-faced, geometric stone sprung up from the dead man.

And time passed.

---

A city of mist stood against the grass and lonely desolation of the plains. All around it stood pillars of crystal, reflecting the sun across their warped faces.

The city-in-the-mist glowed with inner light. It was a place of laughter and joy. In all the world, only this city was eternally happy.

A nomad caravan passed over the hills. They gazed wistfully at the impossible city.

As the nomads made their camp and slept, a group of young braves crept towards the city below. They dared each other to step a little further, time and time again, until one finally broke forward into a run, darting towards the edge of the mists with a courageous cry.

But the wind twisted- or perhaps the mist was simply hungry. It surged forward and he was enveloped.

He took three steps more on sheer momentum and froze, all bravery deserting him. His body was white as a sheet. He trembled, once, and then began to collapse to his knees. His fingers crumbled to ash. His hands turned to stone and fell apart.

For a moment there was a statue where the brave had been. Then it became ash.

The others screamed in terror and fled...

None of them saw the ghost of white mist arise where their brother had fallen. The ghost of the brave took a slow, faltering step forward, staring in horror at his incorporeal hands.

But more and more ghosts appeared, stepping forward from the illusionary city. They welcomed him with open arms.

And as he vanished into the impossible city, he had begun to smile.

---

Nic awoke half expecting to find his skin covered in crystal. He slowly shook himself free of the dream, while trying to press its details into his memory.

What had the vision taught him...

The warrior's manifestation of Primordial Mist was completely different from his own, but that allowed him to see the ability from new angles. Time was a two-edged blade. Nic’s attack destroyed enemies by robbing them of youth and vitality. The warrior's mist worked in the opposite direction, seeming to turn those it touched into part of his memory.

And the warrior’s power let him make the past real once more.

At the very least, Nic now understood what the ‘Jewel of Ages’ for his Primordial Mist would unlock. It had to be the ability to seal time into crystallized form, like the warrior had done at the end of his life…

And that led him to a realization.

When he'd founded Winterhome, one of the gifts he'd been given was a forest of memories contained within petrified crystals. At the time he'd paid it little attention; it was the least directly useful of his gifts.

But if the treant who'd created that forest was a fellow wielder of the Primordial Mists…

Nic had overlooked a vital resource.

Shaking his head, he could only laugh at himself. He was too fond of rushing to solve a problem and running right past the solution.

Extending a hand, Nic spat a wisp of mist into his palm. It formed a spiraling orb, bone-white and half-translucent, in which Nic saw vague glimpses of blurry color. But something was different, now. The mist had always contained a sense of timelessness, inevitably, austere strength…

Now it contained the loneliness and isolation of passing time. His concept of Desolation had merged into the mist, allowing it to bind aura and restrict foes.

It was an immediate and qualitative change.

The warrior’s unhappy life had allowed him to channel Desolation through the power of time, laying the world into a flat rhythm of isolation and fear…

Nic was glad to have received the benefit of that experience without paying the lonely price.

But as he experimented with this newfound gift, a beam of light shot up into the sky, piercing into the cloudless blue of the desert horizon. Within that beam, five aleph runes were inscribed.

Somebody had completed a set…

And become prey.

Nic rose to his feet, licking his lips. Whoever it was, he didn’t intend to let them become anyone else’s dinner. Lifting his hand, he conjured a sandboard and took off, racing out of the oasis and across the endless plains. The beam wasn’t far…

In fact…

He could already see the distant figure who had earned the poison gift.