The Tick Of Eternity
Tick… Tock…
Tick… Tock…
Tick… Tock…
The rhythm was relentless, predictable, grounding. A little boy sat alone in his room, his eyes fixed on the little clock that ticked on the edge of his bedside table. Every tick was a countdown, every tock a step closer to that time…that time where only fear remains. five o'clock. Five meant his parents would return, and with them, the volatility, the shouting and the beatings. He has not seen them since the war started and he's hoped it stay that way.
Unfortunately, in this world, it doesn't matter what you want.
Today was the day the war truly ended.
Today is the day they come back home.
Tick… Tock…
Tick… Tock…
Tick… Tock…
But until then, the boy had the clock—its small, steady sounds, its chipped face with hands that moved in a rhythm even he could rely on.
Tick… Tock…
Tick… Tock…
Each tick felt like an anchor, a promise that no matter what happened after, the clock would keep ticking. It was his sanctuary. He knew how many seconds passed between each tick, and he counted them, waiting for the moments of safety to slip by, trying to make the time stretch as long as he could. He was only a child, but time had become his closest companion. Time was on his side.
Tick… Tock…
The boy sat in silence, bracing himself for the inevitable. As he stared at the clock, he noticed how time seemed to stretch in moments like these, each second drawing out longer than the last, as though the clock itself was hesitant to bring him closer to what he dreaded. He'd realized that time felt different depending on what you were waiting for—how it slowed painfully in moments of fear and flew by when things were good. Yet he knew, deep down, time itself wasn't changing. Only how he felt it did.
For the boy, it was something to watch, something predictable. In a house filled with anxiety and tension, the clock never changed; it kept ticking.
Tick… Tock…
The boy sat quietly, listening to the muffled sounds of voices and footsteps drifting in from outside. He caught fragments—words like "war," "tragedy," and "death." Even at his age, he knew enough to piece together that something terrible had happened. It had started as whispers, fragments of rumors he barely understood. He'd overheard them in broken conversations between adults who spoke in low voices, as though the words themselves might cause harm if spoken too loudly. A war was raging in the Ascendant Realm, they said, a war between forces so powerful they could tear the fabric of reality. The boy didn't know what the Ascendant Realm was exactly, but he'd heard stories of it—an endless expanse where mystical creatures roamed and ancient lords held dominion over the very foundations of existence. Concepts or Kardia, they called them.
No one in the mortal realm had seen it coming, least of all him. The sky looked the same, the earth felt as solid as ever. And yet, the war seemed to hover above, casting shadows down on everything, even if no one could see it. He felt the weight of it, even without fully grasping the enormity of what it meant.
A sudden sting bit into his arm, and he swatted at it instinctively. Looking down at his hand, he saw the tiny smear of blood left by a mosquito he'd just ended. In that small moment, he realized how easily time could run out—for anyone, anything. It was all just a matter of impulse. Time had come to a stop for that tiny insect, and he couldn't help but wonder, uneasily, when his own time might come to an end.
Tick… Tock…
Tick… Tock…
Tick… Tock…
It kept ticking, but his parents did not come home.
Ever again.
His memories of what followed were a blur: a woman in a gown the color of dusk, with silver threads woven through like constellations, found him there. She seemed to exist just outside the bounds of light and shadow, and yet she appeared solid, grounding, like the tick of that clock. He would come to know her as Tesseris, the Lady of Time herself—and eventually, as Grandmother.
Lady Time rarely left her realm, the Tempuras Sanctum—a place where history, possibility, and endless paths of "what could have been" twisted and intertwined in shimmering light. Yet she had come to the mortal world for the boy-Clarence. She had felt a tug, a ripple in time, pulling her toward him, as if he were a shard of time itself that needed mending. Clarence's world had crumbled with his parents' alleged deaths, the war that left it fractured beyond repair. He had been abandoned, but Tesseris had seen something in him, something she couldn't ignore.
Now, he sat within the Tempuras Sanctum, where his days were filled with the steady rhythms and strange lessons of the lady who had become his adoptive grandmother. Time was something one could study, she told him, but never fully grasp—no one could, not even her. "Time is a mirror, Clarence," she would say in her rich, calm voice, "and it only ever reflects back what you choose to see." She was guiding him through the mysteries of her concept, hoping he might one day come to understand it as deeply as she did.
Clarence had grown into a young man since that fateful day. He was taller now, blue and yellow tinted-eyes with an easy smile and a natural charm that endeared him to all within the Sanctum. His personality was both amiable and sly, a disarming blend that made him seem almost careless—except Lady Time knew better. Clarence was watchful, cunning even, though he wore his intelligence lightly, like a second skin. She suspected he knew more than he let on; she could see it in his questions and the way he observed every shifting minute in her realm. His affinity for time was rare, perhaps even unnatural, and sometimes, it unsettled her.
By his side, always, was Rosie, a girl only a year or so younger than Clarence, who had become his dearest companion and, in many ways, his guide. Rosie's gift was the Concept of Guidance—a subtle power that was less about knowing paths and more about helping others find their own way. Clarence liked to joke that Rosie was a compass he'd never asked for, but he valued her deeply, even if he didn't say it often. Where he was charming and sly, she was a quiet balance, never letting him stray too far into his own mind. It was Rosie who kept him anchored when the weight of his past—and the shadows of his parents—crept too close.
And then there was Auriel, his pet—a curious creature that had found him one day as he wandered the twisting paths of the Sanctum. Auriel was a shadow-wraith, a creature of dark, shifting form, with glowing eyes that watched him with an intelligence almost too keen. Lady Time had tried to warn him about keeping a shadow-wraith; they were unpredictable, prone to vanishing through the cracks between moments. But Clarence had felt an odd kinship with Auriel, a creature belonging neither fully to shadow nor light, just as he often felt caught between his past and his adopted life with Lady Time.
Lady Time had no children of her own, no descendants to carry on her legacy, for there were few who could truly grasp the complexity of her concept. Lords of Concepts traditionally passed their knowledge to blood heirs—those who possessed an affinity with their principles, shaping them over generations. But Clarence, an orphan with no lineage tied to the Lords, had been marked with a rare affinity to time. Lady Time sensed it the moment she found him, that uncanny fixation with the tick of seconds, the quiet reverence he held for each passing moment. She had once walked past his room and seen him simply watching the great clock in the Sanctum, staring at its hands as they shifted. He had been so intent, as though he could see time itself unraveling in those slow turns.
She contemplated what the boy would grow into and the countless achievements that awaited him in this life. The thought filled her with a deep sense of joy.
She can't wait to see him and all his glory.