The marsh stank of rotting time.
Karos moved through the Valean lowlands in silence, mist curling around his boots like lost spirits. The ground squelched with each step, but he moved lightly, instinctively avoiding unstable patches—places where time had fractured, where the very land seemed to breathe in disjointed rhythms.
Above the murky waters and gnarled swamp trees, a shape rose on the horizon: a spire, glassy and unnatural, jutting from the mire like a blade driven through the heart of the world.
It shimmered unnaturally, refracting the moonlight into impossible hues. Sometimes it vanished entirely from view, only to reappear a moment later, slightly shifted in position—as if it was not fully part of this world, but something from a different time.
Karos frowned. This was not natural.
The Spire was not a structure, but a scar—a wound in time itself, bleeding across the ages.
He reached the edge of a half-sunken ruin—stone pillars, long abandoned, overrun with moss and tangled vines. Beneath the shadow of a crumbling arch, something stirred.
A figure.
A man, hunched and ragged, as if caught between moments. His eyes snapped open in confusion as his body trembled, moving backward—each joint unwinding as he returned to life, skin knitting together like a puzzle forced into the wrong pattern. His voice—a mix of terror and despair—scrambled out.
"Please," the man gasped. "Don't let it finish…" his voice coming as a strangled, echoing whisper.
Then, with a jerking motion, his limbs reversed, his breath leaving his lungs, his heartbeat un-pounding. His very form decomposed before Karos's eyes, fading from existence, erased by the shifting of time itself.
Karos stood still, watching the man vanish completely into the air.
The air felt heavier. The Spire loomed larger.
Footsteps broke the stillness.
A woman stepped from the mist, bowstring at the ready—she had a slender figure, her movements graceful despite the mire. Loose stands of moonlight white hair moved in the slight breeze from under a dark hood, her armor simple but ancient, hardened leathers etched with intricate swirls and delicate patterns. Her eyes, one silver and one violet, surveyed Karos with quiet authority, measuring him as if she already knew him.
"You don't belong here," Karos said, his hand tightening on his weapon.
The woman—Kara Vakia—nodded slowly, as if confirming something in her mind. "This place does seem strange. Who are you? Where am I?"
Karos stares at the strange woman for a moment. "I'm Karos Belfier and this is the Valean Marsh."
Kara's gaze sharpened. "I don't understand, what do you mean? I was in the throne room of Elthia preparing for a siege when suddenly the very air seemed to shatter, and I awoke here."
Before Karos could respond, another figure shot out of the nearby bushes, rolling to a stop before him with an acrobatic grace that could only belong to a practiced fighter. The figure, a wiry half-goblin, grinned at him.
"Nice place," the goblin said, brushing himself off. "Real cozy. Y'know, for the swamp of doom."
Karos raised an eyebrow. "Who are you?"
"Shin, half-goblin monk. Owner of the greatest bar and tavern in the realms." Shin eyed the Spire. "I don't know exactly what's happening, but I'm kind of a big deal. Don't know if I got trashed on my own stock or what but this is not my tavern."
A shadow fell over the ground, and another figure appeared—a tall, gray skinned dark elf with a grim expression, his eyes scanning the surroundings with sharp, calculating focus. His posture was one of experience, and the two curved blades at his hips seemed ready for a battle that hadn't yet arrived.
"Yazdrin Khalazza, Ranger of the Shadowguard," the dark elf spoke without looking at them directly, his voice deep and controlled. "I recognize this area but it has changed drastically according to my map."
Karos raised an eyebrow again. "Another one from the past or future. Well, this is turning into quite the gathering."
Yazdrin didn't acknowledge the sarcasm. "Where are we, better yet when are we?"
Kara spoke first. "What do you mean 'when'? I'm sorry but I seem to be missing something here. This place feels strange and unfamiliar."
Shin looked around, his expression skeptical. "Questions? Not my expertise, but I can tell that something's off. Definitely not my time, though. I think this thing"—he pointed to the spire— "is what pulled us all through."
Karos spoke, "Time is twisted here; when I arrived, I saw a man stuck in a loop, repeatedly living and dying. It is a gap that is constantly moving forward and backwards simultaneously."
"A space between ages," Kara realizes quietly. "Like a tear, a void. Something between moments. Where time itself breaks, splinters, and shatters. We should not be here."
Karos felt the weight of their words. The Anchor pulsed excitedly but never acted like this. His body felt wrong, pulled between seconds.
The Spire trembled.
The air around them shimmered, and the ground rumbled with the force of a distant thunderclap—though there were no clouds in the sky. The Spire began to pulse, sending waves of distortion through the marsh.
"Whatever it is," Karos said, "It's waking up."
Suddenly, a screech echoed through the air—a sound that felt like it was repeating itself in the distance, though the source was nowhere to be seen. Creatures began to rise from the bog—seceral black dragon wyrmlings, their bodies flickering in and out of time.
Black dragons hadn't been seen in decades, and these were not the kind Karos had heard of before. They were worse—their obsidian scales shimmer with faint, shifting patterns like oil on water—markings inherited from an age when the moon bled silver, and the stars whispered dark secrets. Their eyes aren't just pools of malevolence; they flicker with echoes of a time when dragons ruled not just skies and swamps, but the flow of time itself. Beasts from a time centuries before Karos's time.
Shin stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. "Just leave this to me." The half goblin stepped forward, kneeling before the inky wyrmling and began growling and doing his best to mimic the movements of the beast.
The rest of the party watched the display in stunned silence before Yazdrin drew his twin blades, his movements swift and deliberate as he moved towards the wyrmling that Shin was impersonating. "We'll deal with them. Together."
Kara knocked an arrow to her bow and aimed, her eyes sharp with focus. "The Spire cannot remain standing."
Karos drew his great sword, his eyes fixed on the dragons. "Then we'll make sure it doesn't."
And the battle began.
Shin, done with his attempted display of authority, leaped into the fray, striking with precision, using his goblin agility to move faster than the wyrmlings could react. Kara's arrows flew like meteors, each one striking with deadly precision sending glints of ice across their bodies and sending one after another back into the stream of broken time. Yazdrin was a blur, moving through the chaos with his twin blades cutting down anything that moved. Karos, too, was a force—his strikes sending shockwaves through the dragons, tearing through them as if they were mere shadows.
But still, the Spire pulsed.
The ground beneath them rumbled.
"Whatever this thing is," Kara said as she fired again, "it's only going to get worse."
Karos nodded grimly. "Then we stop it here."
From strangers in the mire, to comrades in arms, they fought as one.