A sickly green mist slithered across the room, its tendrils clinging to every unstoppered flask and open tome. The acrid stench of sulfur and something unpleasantly metallic clung to the air.

A young man, with wild black cruls and thick aviator goggles, scrambled between the cluttered benches. He muttered incantations from the yellowed pages of recipe books strewn open, hurriedly tossing pinches of shimmering substances into his bubbling cauldron.

He carefully gathers a row of vials with liquids of different colours, textures, and viscosities and brings them to the Steel cauldron. It sat in the middle of the room, atop rocks that burned but gave out no smoke. 

He crouched, his fingers fumbling for a moment before steadying his grip on a vial. The rocks before him hummed faintly, their once-brilliant white fire fading to a dull glow.

Sighing, he gently placed the vials on the cool stone floor and withdrew a small red crystal from his pocket. It radiated warmth, a teasing echo of his brother's voice – 'Here, big bro. Now you don't have to keep begging me to charge your Neversmoke, and you can finally leave me to my studies!'

He touched the crystal onto the rocks, and he quickly pulled his hand back, the white flames flaring up and burning his fingertips. He picked his vials and stood back up, starting to pour them into the cauldron.

As he was about to deposit the last flask, a shock wave blew across the room, knocking many things into the ground, and sending the flask flying into the wall.

Just before the sound of glass shattering could be heard across the room, the man reached out his gloved hand to the flying flask. "Traxia!" A magic circle formed around his wrist, and then rotated along with it. The viscous liquid in the flask escaped out of the container, swirling madly in the air before cascading safely into the cauldron with a hiss.

As the dust settled, the sharp shards of the shattered flask glittered in the pale light filtering through the basement window. The man sighed and dropped his hand, the magic circle disappearing. He took a good look at the cauldron's content, smelled it, took a sip of it, nodded with a satisfied look, and dashed out of the basement.

"Anton! How many times will I have to tell you not to use Pyromancy inside the house!" he shouted, as he scrambled towards the living room. Well, rather, what should have been a living room felt more like a battlefield – metal walls, floors, and ceilings bearing the scars of combat, the charred silhouettes of training dummies haunting the metallic surfaces.

Laid unconscious against one of the metal walls, was a kid with messy white hair wearing an oversized white cloak, holding a staff made of two intertwined parts; one of pure white metal, which was straight and shiny, and another of black wood, pointy and dark. The top of the staff was lit in flames that quickly dissipated, revealing a white crystal floating on top of it.

"Anton! Damn it," said the young man, shaking the white-haired kid awake. "You have to control yourself when training! What if you hurt yourself?!"

Anton slowly opened his eyes, looking at the black-haired man with a confused expression, which quickly turns into a smile.

"Frank! I did it, I figured out a new casting method!" he leaped to his feet, and his staff flew to his hand.

He pointed his staff to Frank, several magic circles starting to rotate around the white crystal that floated on top of it.

"Wait! Not on me, are you insane!?" shouted Frank, as several layers of semi-transparent barriers appeared between him and Anton.

Anton quickly realized his targeting and pointed his staff at a dummy that already had half of its face missing.

"Flamare," Anton spoke calmly. A stream of fire flew from the crystal of his staff, setting the dummy aflame.

"Oh Shi-" Frank pointed his barriers to the dummy, but was interrupted by a...

"Ruina!" All of the flames collapsed into a small sphere, which quickly exploded into a ball of fire that covered the living room, stopped only by the metal walls and an invisible barrier that protected the hallways.

As the flames died down, and the ashes settled back into the ground, Frank sighed. This happened more often than he knew how to handle. He took a good look at his once-again unconscious brother and picked him up from the ground.

'So much for boy genius', he thought, carrying him to his room.

Walking through the old house, the wooden floors creaked as he stepped on them, making sounds that Frank knew as intimately as the recipes from his first Alchemy book. Faded photographs and paintings with holes in them. Leaking faucets, flickering lights, self-sweeping brooms and mops that were muddying up the house rather than cleaning. This house had long past expired, still holding itself together only due to the myriad of spells cast by their parents.

Frank kicked his little brother's room door open and put him in his bed. Anton's room looked more like a library than a room. Every inch of the wall had bookshelves, and every bookshelf was filled with books and more books on every topic you could imagine.

There were stacks of books on top of stacks of loose papers on top of scrolls on top of the ground, and if one were to open the dresser, they would find more vials of ink than clothes.

The only clean part of the room was Anton's desk, which he kept meticulously organized, with a clean feather, a closed vial of ink, an empty scroll, and a book open on whichever page he had last stopped reading it; the book this time was thick and big enough to make the table curve, and held a title which would scare any other teenager: Theory and Study of Modern Casting Methods III.

This room had stayed this way for 10 years, and would stay this way forever if they were not to depart tomorrow; But alas, they'd leave this ghost-filled house for the famous halls of the Astra Magic University. It was the culmination of every childhood dream, the promise of their parents' legacy echoing in their footsteps.

Frank opened his brother's dresser and quickly made a bag with all the clean clothes that he could find. He left a backpack on top of the desk, closing the book and putting it on the nearest pile of thick books. 

"Escrivum" he whispered, flicking his wrist at the open scroll. A magic circle spun around the scroll, letters starting to form as if burned into the paper. 'Pack only important things, brother. There will be plenty of books and writing material in the university.'

He sighed and left the room, closing the door lightly, and headed to his laboratory to pack everything up. As he packed his vials, alchemical ingredients, clothes and knick-knacks, Frank's mind was somewhere else.

Instead of the pure and child-like excitement Anton radiated, Frank felt a quiet dread tightening in his gut. The University was a world away – a world of brilliant minds and cutthroat competition. Could he protect his little brother's reckless brilliance out there? What about his dreams, would they finally be one step closer?

He shut his favorite worn suitcase with a decisive snap. Answers would have to wait. For tonight, there was only the familiar rhythm of packing, of coaxing order from Anton's beloved chaos, and the bittersweet knowledge that with every minute, their pasts slipped a little further away.

"The day has finally come," he murmured to himself, glancing at one of the decaying paintings. "I hope the two of you are proud of us, Mr and Mrs. Voya."

---

Welcome to The Chronomancer. The culmination of a 5 year project in writing, worldbuilding, adventuring, and romance.

In this book, I deposit the fear and love that is held close to my heart. The pain of time. 

In order to keep it short, I need not tell you much. Simply,

Enjoy the story

- Luka, TheTaleTeller.