It took him hours to find the training room. The conversation with Amelia still replayed, unrelenting in the moments between his steps.

  "I severed our karma. It was the only way to get the information to get back to Earth."

  "What do you mean, severed our karma?"

  "The world-ender snake asked for a price, and he showed me the lines that I could cut. Ours was the only bond worth what he offered. He said it wouldn't change how you felt for me."

  "You trusted a snake? Dane, when I remember how we met and how our relationship progressed, it feels like I'm watching a show, not living it. I need some time to think."

  "Amelia... I never wanted..."

  "Just get out of here."

  It wasn't the homecoming he'd imagined. He still had half a day before he was due at the coliseum, and wandering the city filled the silence that her absence left behind. The old training grounds had been turned into living quarters. A few guards still recognized him, though, and pointed him toward the far side of town.

  The air shimmered faintly with a containment barrier, meant to keep stray spells and strikes from leveling nearby homes. Even the training dummies had changed; they were no longer made of wood and looked harder to break, quicker to repair, and now had cores that pulsed faintly, like dungeon bosses.

  His spectral axe hummed in his grip. It had cost him almost a third of his mana to forge, but it felt right. The Executioner's Axe was too large and didn't fit with his Temporal flow technique. This one could change shape with his intent, fit the flow of any battle. The dummy before him stood silent and waiting, its eyes dull glass.

  He thought of Amelia again. The tear on her cheek, the way she wouldn't meet his eyes. The axe moved before he realized he'd swung it. The dummy imploded, collapsing inward in a clean, soundless flash. Dust hung where it had stood.

  He stared through it, his eyes refusing to process the real world. When he forged his core, he'd closed paths that could never be reopened. He wondered now if she'd been behind one of them. Or if that wall had always been there, and only now could he see it.

  "You done soon? The recruits need the room."

  Dane blinked, turning toward the voice. A young guard leaned against the doorway, helm tucked beneath his arm.

  "Yeah. Just finishing up. Murphy's shop still in the same place?"

  "He's got a few now, but you'll usually find him at the one next to St. Mara's Hospital."

  Dane gave a nod. The shattered dummy reformed at his feet, its fragments knitting together slowly from its core. It stopped just before it was whole, and the metallic dummy's glow had faded. He gathered what remained and placed it gently into a wooden crate stamped REPAIR. Cobwebs clung to its corners, the silk glimmering faintly in the dim light.

  It looked like no one had used it in a long time.

  He passed under an arch of blackened steel, where the sign now read Murphy's Mechanicals, the letters flickering with mana-script sigils and glyphs. Dane could hear him before he saw him: that familiar rasp of laughter, the deep voice, the clatter of tools.

  Inside, the shop was chaos in motion. Five apprentices darted between benches, each lost in their task, buffing alloy plates, fitting cores into gauntlets, testing runic circuitry against glowing wards. Sparks danced like fireflies in the air, the hum of enchantment saturating the walls.

  Murphy himself stood near the back, half-bent over an anvil. His once-dark hair was now almost white, but the same crooked grin tugged at his face when he looked up.

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  "Well, I'll be damned if it isn't the Baron himself. Thought you'd gone with it being five years."

  "What do you mean, five years?" Dane said quietly. "It was only a couple of months."

  Murphy wiped his hands on a stained cloth and approached, squinting as though the years had dulled his sight but not his curiosity. "It didn't make sense at first, but after Tomas told us about the time distortion being out of sync. It used to be the deeper you went in, but now it varies. Sometimes it's a few extra days compared to the outside, sometimes it's a year. You're lucky you came back when you did; you might have been talking to me in a wheelchair if you had waited a little longer."

  How many more years am I going to miss trying to get back to Earth?

  The smith belowed a bark of laughter, bringing him out of his introspection. "Enough about me and this place. You don't come here on social calls, though you should probably start. What are you looking to buy?"

  Dane's eyes lingered on a display rack near the wall. Sleek armor, lighter than the plated sets the Legion used, shimmered faintly beneath the shop lights. The lines were too refined, too balanced to be mass production. Murphy noticed his gaze and grinned wider.

  "I figured you'd be drawn to that one. Tomas has ordered me and the apprentice to do only the basics. Wants me to 'keep the market fair,' he says." Murphy snorted. "A waste, if you ask me. But I'm not one to argue with a chancellor's coin. You buy it, though, I won't say a word."

  Dane stepped closer. The armor looked almost alive, woven alloy channels running like veins across the chest, the faint shimmer of mana circuitry pulsing along the edges. It wasn't just protective; it flowed, as if designed to move with the body instead of against it.

  "What's it made of?"

  "A local alloy mixed with something that came down in one of the meteor showers from the Contested Zone. Lighter than steel, tougher than mythril. Conducts mana like it's born for it. Oh...and the kicker."

  Murphy rapped his knuckles against a bracer. A translucent blue field shimmered outward before collapsing back into nothing. "Mana-reactive shielding. No crystals required. The thing draws straight from your pool; it's like casting a ward, but you don't need to waste a spell slot. Of course, that means it's only as strong as the fool wearing it."

  Dane's mouth twitched. "That's new."

  "Yeah, it took a while to create some forging techniques to bypass the natural shield, but it's a nice piece. If I had to guess, you'll basically be bulletproof from anything lower than a peak C rank."

  He ran his hand along the chestplate, feeling the faint vibration through his palm, the hum of resonance, eager to be claimed.

  "How much?"

  Murphy scratched his chin. "For anyone else? Twenty thousand gold and a favor I can cash in when I need it. For you? Fifteen and a promise you don't die wearing it. I can't have another piece of my work buried before its time."

  Dane pulled up his interface and transferred money from a fund labeled 'treasury' to Murphy's Mechanicals, the faint light within it swirling like a captured flame. "When Tomas asks, tell him to take it up with his boss."

  Murphy gave him a look halfway between mischief and pride. "I get a feeling that I should stop you, but I'll tell him."

  "Thanks," Dane said

  The older man sighed and gestured to a curtained alcove. "Try it on, then. It should work itself into your form after the first wear."

  The armor sealed around him with a low metallic hiss, mana veins flickering to life across the plates. The fit was perfect. He clenched his fists, and it felt like a second skin wrapping around him.

  Dane stepped out of Murphy's shop and into the fading light. He took one last look at Chronowell and portalled to the shattered reach. He used Blink to hasten his approach to the distant dome.

  He passed through the outer wards where the city gave way to the old ringed arena. The streets there were stripped bare, no vendors, no travelers, just the scent of rain on stone and the hum of containment glyphs buried in the walls. Pale light ran through the channels between bricks, pulsing in time with his pace.

  The Collesium rose ahead, immense and cold. Its gates stood open like the mouth of something ancient.

  Two guards met him halfway up the stairs. They straightened when they recognized him.

  "Baron McAlister. We weren't expecting you until morning."

  "I'm here now," he said.

  They hesitated, then stepped aside. "Your Crucibal cell's ready. Orders are to send you straight in."

  He inclined his head. "Good."

  He crossed the threshold. The change was immediate, the air sharpened, charged with the scent of ozone and iron. The mana wards along the corridor shifted from blue to gold as they recognized his core signature. He felt their pull, the faint tug of sealing enchantments meant to contain what entered.

  At the end of the hall, a cell waited.

  Not a prison, exactly, just a stone chamber carved with the sigils of beginning. Dane stopped at the doorway. His reflection flickered in the metallic sheen of his new armor, pale eyes set in a face carved thinner by purpose.

  He'd get through this. Quickly, cleanly. Then he'd find Amelia, and maybe. If the distortion hadn't stolen too much time, he could still get her back.

  He stepped inside, and the door sealed behind him as the stone slid on stone.