Perilous Pursuit for Time: Prologue – The Hour the World Slipped

The night Pherelar Jadesyl lost the hour that undid him, the twin moons of Eldoria quarreled above the towers of Aerlune. One blazed a cold white that painted the spires in frost-fire, while the other, copper and brooding, sulked behind a veil of stormclouds. Pherelar felt the tension in his bones as surely as a harpist hears a discordant string. Time itself, the great river he had devoted his life to studying, seemed to stutter.

The lecture hall still smelled of parchment, lamp oil, and the sweet spice of cardamom buns cooling on a tray he had smuggled in from the kitchens. Pherelar was no ordinary professor who confined himself to towers and scrolls. He had wandered through caravan markets of the Ember Dunes, where merchants traded in spices that tasted like lightning; he had walked the glacial libraries of the North, where tomes were carved into the very ice and only readable by moonlight; he had sailed the Crescent Sea, dining on citrus fish and listening to sailors’ tales of stars that shifted when no one watched. He brought all these stories into his lectures like ingredients into a stew, making each class a feast of knowledge and wanderlust. His students adored him for it, though some elders of the academy muttered that he was more troubadour than scholar.

But Pherelar believed that wisdom traveled on two feet, not four walls. And tonight, chalk in one hand and a honey bun in the other, he was in his element.

He traced bright, frost-edged lines across the slate board, diagrams of how seconds nested into minutes, how days bent into years. His voice carried the warmth of a fire in winter.

“Time,” he said, smiling as though he’d just tasted something marvelous, “is not merely a river that carries us, nor a wheel that turns unfeeling, nor even the blade poets so love to fear. No—time is a kitchen. Leave it idle, and it spoils. Overseason it with worry, and you ruin the dish. But stir it properly, attend it with care, and oh, my friends, it sings. It becomes a banquet.”

His students laughed, scribbled notes, and tore pieces from the buns he had passed around. For Pherelar, teaching was always accompanied by food. He believed flavors opened the mind, that a well-fed student learned faster, laughed easier, remembered longer.

But in the back row sat a man who neither laughed nor ate.

The stranger had entered without sound, as though the air had conspired to let him through. He was unremarkable in shape, yet his presence was an inkblot in the lamplight. He did not belong to the room—he belonged to the absence between ticks of a clock. He watched Pherelar with the patience of a ledger waiting to tally a debt long overdue.

The last student filed out, carrying the warmth of food and words into the night. Lamps guttered. Silence deepened. Only then did the man speak, his voice the dry rasp of vellum pages turning:

“You leash time with metaphors,” he said. “I prefer a chain.”

Pherelar paused, chalk dust still on his fingertips. He had heard many philosophies in his travels—nomads who called time a herd of restless horses, priests who claimed it was a flame that could be passed but not owned, and once a drunken sailor who insisted it was merely a stubborn donkey that moved when it pleased. But never had he heard someone claim time as a chain.

Before he could ask, the man lifted two fingers.

The chalk lines on the board quivered. They swelled, brightened, then slid down into the air like pale snakes. One looped itself around Pherelar’s wrist. It tightened with a weightless click.

“For each day you stand idle,” the stranger said, eyes glinting like knives hidden under cloth, “you will age seven years. Work. Dance. Speak. Run. Let stillness take you, and watch your body crumble.”

The curse sank in—not pain, but worse. A sensation like a calendar opening its hungry mouth, ready to swallow years in greedy gulps.

Pherelar’s heart jolted. He lunged—not away, but forward. He shoved aside benches, cracked chalk diagrams underfoot, and hurled his moonlight net toward the figure. For a blink, silver threads glimmered across the room like a fisherman casting against the night sky.

But the stranger had already slipped backward—into the seam between seconds, into the hollow where time itself blinked. His voice lingered, thin as smoke:

Hurry.

The hall was empty again.

Pherelar stood among upended benches and shivering lamps. His pulse beat too loudly. He felt it—the curse testing him, tugging at the edges of his stillness. His wrist itched, his bones ached faintly as though years pressed their faces against his skin, eager to be let in.

He forced himself to move. Flexing fingers. Pacing the aisles. Whispering spells not because they were needed, but because the syllables kept the rhythm alive. He thought of the countless roads he had walked, the shifting sands of Ember Dunes, the frozen silence of the Glacial Library, the rocking decks of ships where idleness was death. Motion had always been his companion. But now motion was survival.

Heroes in old tales bargained with death and lost. Pherelar would not bargain. He would run.

He tore the silver net from the floor and draped it over his shoulders like a cloak. He stuffed his satchel with figs and honey twists—comforts as essential as wands or runes—and stepped into the night air of Aerlune.

The city’s lower quarter breathed with life: saffron smoke rising from spice stalls, musicians busking with battered lutes, lanterns painting cobblestones gold. It was here, where music never slept and friendship was a stronger coin than gold, that Pherelar sought his first anchor in the storm.

And it was here, in a half-lit courtyard smelling of rain and spice, that he would meet the companions who would change his fate.

👁️ 91 views

JPS Nagi

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