One night, not long after the loss of Professor Valentine—

  A veil of silver mist unfurled across the sky—moonlit river spilling overhead. Weightless. Directionless. Timeless. All that remained was a feeling too vast to be captured in words.

  Skyler opened his eyes to a sky without end. His breathing echoed louder than any sound around him. He could no longer feel his body, yet he existed. Suspended—somewhere between reality and dream.

  It’s said that the realm of dreams can only be found if dreamt into existence first. And now… it was opening before him.

  The blank ground beneath him trembled, then shifted—reshaping into a floating stone platform. At its center stood a single pedestal, upon it lay one book. Its cover was bound in silver leather, etched with shifting runes that pulsed in time with a heartbeat.

  As he stepped closer, the tome opened of its own accord—almost as if it knew who stood before it. The first page glowed faintly—runes stirring, threads tugged alive beneath his gaze.

  By all reason, no human should be able to read such primeval script. Yet somehow… he could.

  The letters rose from the papyrus—tiny sparks taking flight, lifting into the air before rearranging themselves, alive, weaving into new forms.

  “…Weird. I can suddenly read an ancient language? What, do I have a translator installed in my head now?” Skyler muttered. His voice carried no echo. And still, the question seemed to answer itself.

  The more he read, the more something stirred inside him. Not just knowledge—it was a connection. Every word stitched his soul closer to something vast, something beyond description.

  The text spoke of dimensional power, of how to draw energy from the junctions where two worlds overlapped, and how to follow the veins of power drifting between past and future.

  He read slowly, line by line, until they stopped at a passage written in liquid silver ink. The words themselves rippled across the parchment, alive, as though each character carried a heartbeat of its own.

  "When the veil of dreams is lifted, the Codex shall unveil the roots of the greatest secret. The Weaver of Visions is the Master of Time—crafting all things into being…"

  Skyler froze. He stared at the words as if to etch every drop of ink into memory. He read them again—slower this time. His heartbeat aligned with the rhythm of the verse.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The Weaver of Visions is the Master of Time… he repeated inwardly.

  And slowly, he began to believe it wasn’t just poetry.

  It was a warning.

  From an author who had not signed their name—

  And who might be closer than he ever dared to imagine.

  At the heart of the Tower of Time—a place without past, present, or future—footsteps echoed against walls forged from twisted fragments of eternity. Thunder rumbled from nowhere, reverberating endlessly. Black crystal spires circled the chamber, rotating slowly in rhythm with the heartbeat of the cosmos.

  Five cloaked figures stood around a ring-shaped stone table. Sigils pulsed across the floor beneath, shivering, the breath of something that had not awakened for millennia.

  From the shadows stepped a tall man, the leader of the order. His skin was pale, reflectionless as the void, his iron-gray hair floating weightless. He spoke without glancing at the others.

  “The time has come for us to move.”

  The other four remained silent. This was no proclamation of beginning. It was the countdown to possession of the end.

  A woman draped in darkness tilted her head slightly upward. Pale and unlined, framed by hair of deep violet-black. An abyssal fire glimmered where humanity should have been.

  “I will cleanse the false glow of that fox… and return dominion to the darkness once more.” Her voice was soft, carrying a velvet undertone sharper than poison.

  Opposite her, a figure cloaked in fabric that devoured all light—no glint, no reflection. Eyes sunk deeper than a bottomless pit.

  “The girl’s mirrored dimension is nothing but the shape of her fear. I will erase it… and erase her.” The rasp of his tone scratched the silence.

  Another corner: a giant man sat back on a stone dais, his body sheathed in scales of burnished copper-dragon. His hair lashed and rolled, tempest caught mid-motion, while fire simmered in his stare, coals buried beneath centuries.

  “I claim the right of blood. I will take her heart—and restore the dragon race. Not as myth, but as rulers of the new world.”

  Leaning against an icy throne, the lost queen of Heimfrost sat in tranquil stillness. Slender in a sea-silk gown, skin luminous as moonlit water, hair of silver-blue cascading in a wind that did not exist. Time’s frozen shards shimmered faintly in her, as her lips parted.

  “The child who froze time… how pitiful a life. I shall grant her release.”

  The leader raised a hand. A vision of a single tome appeared, floating at the chamber’s center. Silver fire gleamed upon its surface—ink shimmering, liquid starlight adrift. None spoke, none asked. They all knew—this was the axis of every distortion they sought to unravel.

  “With this… not only will we rewrite history. We will erase what should never have been, cleanse the filth from truth, and inscribe the cosmos anew with our very fingertips.”

  No dissent. For each bore a past they longed to erase, a future they burned to forge, and enemies they vowed to annihilate.

  This was the return—

  of the Order of the Black Sun.