Book 3 Chapter 12

Tirr nodded, thinking back to the Shards they had run into so far. Both countries where a shard had appeared had been drastically affected. From the insane wrath that had built up in King Torn, to the arrogance of the Water Temple in Lutel, the Shards affected everything around them… It was no surprise that the discovery of another one could cause an upheaval.

“I don’t know exactly when it was found… There was an earthquake some weeks beforehand that shook up the tunnels down here real bad. After that, one by one, people started going missing. Around here there aren’t many that keep track of each other. So it took a while for word to actually get out. But people started to notice when suddenly a person that you used to see every so often would just be gone.

“After about a month of that, the Council finally put together a search group. It didn’t take them long to find one of the tunnels opened up by the quake. When the search group found the Shard, they were astonished. Nobody had heard of the Shards then and it looked like a gift from God…”

“It revealed itself quickly though… When four members of the search group touched it, they found out exactly what happened to those missing people, and their friends were forced to watch their gruesome fates. The first three that touched it found their bodies deteriorating as all of them started to age. At first slowly, and then faster and faster their bodies went through decades of time within the span of a few seconds. Eventually, their bodies dissipated ground to dust by the passage of time.”

“It was the last one though that really drew the attention of the council. While his comrades aged into dust, he did the opposite. His body shrinking as he slowly reverted, returning through the years as he grew younger and younger. From adult, to teen, to child, to baby, to nothing at all... But when most of the council heard about this terrifying tale, they weren’t scared. Instead, they were fascinated… A power to grow younger…”

“They took control of it immediately, testing its effects over and over again until the first shard user was successfully created. But the results were far from what they wanted… They continued to refine the process, sacrificing dozens to make it as efficient as possible. While other counties struggled to even understand what their shards were, the confederation started churning out users.”

Eventually, though they decided the quality of the participant affected the outcome. They had avoided using us until then, not wanting to lose their perfect tools. But their greed was too great… I was one of the first from the assassins guild that went through the ceremony. It was… unpleasant, to say the least. Despite their tests, there was still only a success rate of about twenty-five percent. I managed to survive, but many of my coworkers at the time didn't. They were impressed with the results but were churning through our numbers quickly. Needing new subjects, the council had a vote on whether to include those still in training…”

“Raife and two others were the only ones to vote no. As I said, I’m not sure if it was remorse or what, but Raife led the charge against it. Though he says he only did it because ruining the academy would be bad in the long run…”

“The fight turned into a stalemate and the issued was supposed to be tabled. But they didn’t know that the others went behind their back and started doing it anyway…”