Kyrion had spent most of the day looking for his handler. He checked many restaurants, clothing stores, and gift shops. When that turned up nothing, he asked around and eventually came across a small boy with wild white hair. Manacles had been placed around his wrists. The child had a mischievous look on his face despite his sickly complexion and dark circles under his shut eyes.

Rion approached the elven guards escorting the child and scowled. “Excuse me sirs. I’d like to know whats going on.”

“Get back, this child is under suspicion of murder and is a crafty individual.”

“Very rude. I didn’t directly kill anyone.” The boy gave the guards a very strange look.

“Why do you look familiar?” Rion asked.

The boy looked towards Rion and smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know. Old man.”

“I am not that old. I’m only fifteen.” Kyrion scowled.

“Thats one digit more than me. OLD MAN.” The boy sneered while still detained.

“Sheesh. Fine, guess I won’t help you out afterall.” Rion turned to leave

“Doesn’t matter anyway. I won’t get caught next time.” The boy took Rion’s hand and smirked as Kyrion was shrouded in black fog.

“What in the?” Kyrion found his hands in cuffs while covered in fog. Knowing better he slipped them off his wrist and let them hit the floor.

“He’s escaping northward!” Yelled one of the guards.

Both guards turned and ran off in that direction despite neither of them saying that.

As the smoke cleared only manacles remained on the ground. Their tracks were undetectable to even Kyrion’s senses.

“That was and odd encounter.”

Deciding that this lead turned up the wrong person, Rion decided to return to his hidden grove. Feeling as though he had forgotten something important. Passing by the waterfall in minutes he continued forward.

As the sun began to set and Rion neared his destination. The temperature had dropped quite a bit.

That was when Kyrion tripped an invisible magical trap, and a spear of ice soon found its way near Kyrion’s neck after shooting out from the river.

“Ah. Hello. I am Rion of team Drisil. Didn’t realize someone else was training here. I’ll go.” Rion identified himself, waved, and made to retreat before he had been forced to stop as a fork shot from the ground and trapped his neck in place.

Lin walked into the clearing with a dangerous look in her eyes.

“I don’t know what's going on but you should be trapped down there.” Lin pointed to a thick layer of familiar ice.

“Oh…Why would that be?”

“What is your end goal?” Lin didn’t answer the question.

“ladies first,” Kyrion said not so easily swayed despite being in what some would call a life-threatening situation. Then again, he knew he could get out of this ice.

“A gentleman should give a lady some information before asking for anything in return.” Lin said stoically.

“Uh. Master? This ice is more real than normal ice. Sliping through space wouldn’t get you out of it.” Jala kindly informed her master before he went and tried something stupid.

“To win this tournament, protect those I love, and rescue a friend or two.” Kyrion decided to answer truthfully. Hiding his eye twitch caused by Jala’s revelation.

“That…Not what I meant.” Lin was confused by the answer.

“It’s stupid, I know. I am no hero Lin, but I do love the world. From the smallest of squirrels to the largest mountains. The world and most of the people in it.” Kyrion’s eyes softened as he spoke a truth not quite understanding her meaning.

“You… You're serious. Didn’t peg you for an altruist.”

A pulse passed through Kyrion’s head soon after.

“Fateless…One…Essence…in death…Soon.” A deep voice spoke to Kyrion through a bond he hadn’t known had been there.

“Yeah. I am that special kind of stupid.” Kyion nodded as he began to fall backward onto the ice, his neck cut slightly. He refocused his mind, straightened, and stood stark still.

“I guess. Sieg could have worded it better.” Lin lessened the slack a bit to give Kyrion more breathing room.

“Siggy is a bit dense. Don’t think too hard about it. His jokes are also bad. Almost reminds me of my…” Kyrion grumbled at the familiar sense of humor.

“And yet you repeat them.”

“When did I…” Kyrion started before he felt a strange pulse in his mana, and a sharp pain shot through his neck before he felt nothing.

Kyrion found himself in an odd place. The young man scowled as he flowed down a river of green ichor. Around him were various luminescent figures that likewise floated down the river. The path led towards a large serpent with scales the size of moons and eyes the size of planets. Its expression was grim as all floated towards it and vanished.

Kyrion went to move but found that his body was heavy. His form was wispy, and his magic was gone. Entering his core failed as here he had no core to observe. He was trapped, he was in an odd place, and he was indeed mad about it.

As though the situation was inevitable, he eventually arrived close enough to the serpent to notice a whirlpool in front of it that sucked up all the other luminescent figures that entered its pull.

The serpent pointed a slate eye in front of Kyrion before it moved its massive body over the whirlpool.

“How are you back here when it is not your time?” It bellowed down to Kyrion with a pressure that sent him flying out of the river.

On landing Kyrion found that he was much lighter as though he had been freed from a crushing pressure.

“What? How do you expect me to figure that out when I don’t even know where here is?” Kyrion looked around the giant creature getting a gauge on what he was observing before he took five steps back and noticed that the creature didn’t get any smaller.

“Ah. Welcome to the underworld, where the weight of your sins determine who gets you. You are where many would call Limbo as you are waiting to be judged. You are not dead however.”

“I see… Did anyone come with me?”

“You were the only one to enter the river ahead of schedule. Behind you is a door, walk through it and you will remember this conversation with the forbidden knowledge of what happens when one dies or you may go down the whirlpool and forget we had this conversation. Lost Fateless.” The serpent said.

Kyrion stood up, turned, and noticed that a white door had appeared over the black ground. Kyrion then looked up at the red sky cloudless sky. “And If I choose neither?”

“Take too long to leave or come here too often and you will need to go back the long way. Coming back from death is an ordeal even when you aren’t supposed to be dead. Try not to come back too soon.”

“Don't count on it. Does everyone come here?”

“No. In fact very few are able to reach this area. Mostly lost souls find themselves in my domain. Many of which died either very early or lost their bodies through possesion.”

“Is that so…Say I ended up here in a very quick amount of time. How many times can I return?”

“You may return one time for free using this doorway. Each other free trip will cost memories, should you be in a situation where you may falsely die multiple times.”

“Memories of this place.” Kyrion muttered.

“And a few more.”

“I see. What is the costly way to get back with my memories?”

“A trip that takes one of your real world years at a minimum and would leave your body in a comatose state.”

“Would another shard of my soul be able to puppet my body in the meantime?”

“Well yes but… You shouldn’t know about that yet.”

“See you soon giant snake thing.” Kyrion hopped through the gate into the bright light beyond.

The world was engulfed in a blue light and Kyrion soon found himself back in his dungeon laying on the floor unable to move as he attuned to his own body before hopping to his feet but not of his own volition.

“What just happened?” Kyrie asked with Kyrion’s mouth.

“A temporal fluctuation. Essenialy the world went back in time.”

“How long was I gone? And why do I feel funny?” Kyrion spoke as he reasserted dominance.

“Two weeks. And its a side effect. You were essentially teleported suddenly and placed back in the position you were in prior to whatever activated this ability.”

“Weeks? Thats quite the upgrade.”

“Two days actually. For me one day is essentially seven in terms of productivity.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I'm sure dilation is set to two times normal. Mostly as my current limit. I can extend it with practice.”

“Well I guess it works.”

“Now what's wrong.”

“Something isn’t right. My mana is expanding.”

“That is indeed odd.”

“Ander, my friend seems to be immune as well. He remembered the day before and is quite confused. Which is odd given that the headmaster didn’t.”

“That's a troubling. Experts are normally immune to this level of time travel, just forbidden to speak of most instances. Unless this effect was caused by a practitioner and if thats the case then the range will be greatly limited hence how I am mostly unaffected..”

“He seemed pretty concerned.”

“Then you could be a target. You need to be careful if that's the case.”

“Just what I needed. I just need to not die.” Kyrion sighed.

A loud sound above could be heard as someone entered the core chamber.

“Rude not to let me into your hideout.” Lin said as she walked down the stairway.

“Kyrion, she’s seen too much. You have to go, silence her.” Karl said in a monotone, various cannons that Kyrion had borrowed from Cecil began to point toward the intruder.

“What? Karl she’s a friend.” Kyrion stood still.

“If she gets in here your life is over. I’m sure you don’t wish for such a thing when we’re just getting started.” Karl turned into his cube form and sunk into the ground. Integrating their body into a golem body built from the mech parts Kyrion borrowed from the goblins and then built with their assistance.

“The abyss, are you talking about? What do you know?” Kyrion looked towards where Karl had vanished.

“Kyrion, why are you talking to yourself? What is this place?” Lin put her hands on her hips,

“An underground training facility.” Kyrion said plainly as he took a step back.

“Lie by omission. Minus 5 points…” A white fox appeared and sneered at Kyrion.

“Shut it Mamon.”

“But master. Something about him rubs me the wrong way. He smells like trouble.” The fox said.

Kyrion thought for a second his connection with Jala tightened.

“Do not reveal my presence here.” Jala stated.

“I am known by many as trouble. What are you doing here?” Kyrion crossed his arms.

“I wondered where you ran off too. Why are you acting so rude, now?”

“Right. Well… The simple answer is that someone is messing with time magic and it keeps getting reset. Although Lin what bugs me the most is how you managed to beat Ander here.”

“I just happened to be...” A bolt of lightning interrupted Lin as Ander seemed to fly down the entrance and through the door that leads into the dungeon.

“I thought we were meeting by the waterfall.” Kyrion scowled.

“We were. Until you went the wrong way and got lost. So I decided to follow you from a distance. And by you, I mean your trail of destruction and mayhem.”

“I did no such thing. Just happened to run into someone I didn’t know and they happened to have been accused of assasination. They also escaped, so we should be careful if they’re like us.”

“Rion… You don’t just run into someone like that.”

“Well I was following rumors and happened to find someone with your hair color.”

“My hair color is quite common depending on where your from.”

“Yeah. I have met quite a few with white and silver hair colors. You’d think that the creators of our world were unimaginitive." Kyrion turned his head and looked at the western wall knowingly.

“What?”

“Don’t worry about it. ”

“But thats blasphemy against Imala.”

“She knows what she did.” Kyrion squinted.

Lin’s left eye twitched.

“Anyhow. We need to split up and explore the city, figure out whats going on and how all of us are connected.”

“What makes you our leader?” Lin asked.

“I’m Ander’s leader, although he doesn’t need to listen to me. However, I will let him train here in a place with twice time dilation and actual opponents worth fighting

“How is it better than a training room?”

“Karl? Fire a dud at Ander.”

A cannon pointed towards Ander from behind and fired a melon-shaped projectile.

Ander swiftly moved to the side out of instinct as the projectile hit the ground with a loud crash trailed by a strange whistling sound. Causing a crater to form where the young man would have been. Had it hit then bones would have been broken.

“That was not a dud round.” Kyrion stated.

“It was the slowest and least costly ammunition. Unless you wanted me to use the stun setting.” Karl told Kyrion through his bond.

“That sould have been implied.” Kyrion hissed through their bond.

“Your saying that you have various tools I can use to train my reaction speed with stakes?” Ander asked.

“Yes.” Kyrion said through his teeth.

“This is a dungeon. Aren’t they supposed to be lost? How did you find one here?” Lin scowled.

“No more questions. We need to investigate. Right now we have two leads, the tournament, and the alleged assassin. Lin, you will watch the tournament and document anything odd. Ander you will find our assassin with hair as white as snow and a heart as black as obsidion. I will alternate between both places as needed looking for other clues.”

“Shouldn’t Ander watch the fights while I look for the white haired boy?”

“Something tells me that is would be a bad idea. As Ander is likely to have to fight Damian if he shows up or questions will be asked while i’m sure you will end up in a strange situation if you get involved with that boy. I’m sure of it.” Kyrion scowled as he tried to understand that expression.

“Sounds good. Question the kid and then go train.” Ander palmed his fist.

“Right. Lets split.” Kyrion smirked before heading to the confession boot to take a nap.