Interlude I:

  Rheda couldn’t take his eyes off him.

  Soro was there, on the same stone bench where Rheda had seen him so many times before. Head bowed, hands resting on his knees, gaze lost in a point that didn’t belong to this room nor to this time. He looked more like a statue than a man. And yet, Rheda knew: that stillness held the storm that would break the cycle.

  He approached with slow steps, afraid that any sound would shatter the vision.

  “Soro…” he whispered. “I know you don’t understand it yet, but all of this depends on you. Not on me, not on Arktrup, not on the entire Conclave. Only you can break the wheel.”

  He waited.

  Silence was absolute.

  The smoke from the braziers curled around the motionless figure, as if even the incense sought answers from him.

  Rheda tried again, a little firmer:

  “We saw you in the waters, we saw you in the marks. You’re the key. You’re the wound and the cure. Don’t you feel it?”

  Nothing.

  Soro didn’t even lift his gaze.

  Rheda’s throat tightened. He knew he shouldn’t insist. He had learned in other cycles that ignorance was also a refuge. He took a step back, drew a slow breath, and turned around.

  Arktrup was waiting for him near the bronze basin, the reflection of the water dancing across his face. His eyes seemed to look at both the present and the memories of a thousand futures.

  “It is not yet time for him to speak,” he said with a grave, almost paternal voice, guessing the torment in Rheda’s mind.

  Rheda lowered his head like a scolded child.

  “It’s just… seeing him there, not knowing who he is… not understanding what he carries inside… it tears me apart.”

  “And that is precisely why he still breathes,” Arktrup replied, without harshness but without compassion either. “If he knew now what he knows later, the cycle would break before it’s even born.”

  Rheda clenched his fists, fighting the impulse to speak to Soro again. The silence of the chosen weighed more than any prayer.

  Arktrup leaned toward him, in the tone of someone offering a minor detail, something that didn’t seem central but meant everything:

  “There will be time. You already know what’s coming. You saw how even Lupers played his part, how Thelonopios will do the same with Nolan, how all of us follow the current.”

  Rheda nodded.

  “Poor Lupers…”

  Arktrup turned to him almost in anger.

  “You do not pity someone who dies with purpose.”

  Rheda grew nervous. He had never seen his master like this. He nodded quickly.

  “I understand, master. Forgive the ignorance.”

  Arktrup was no longer looking at him. He had closed his eyes, immersed in the vision of the basin.

  Rheda stepped back, the echo of that name pounding in his mind. He looked one last time at Soro, motionless, silent, untouchable.

  And he knew that, when time turned again, he would try to speak to him once more.

  He would fail again.

  And even so, he would keep trying.

  Rheda didn’t know how long he remained by the basin, staring without seeing. It could have been minutes or the rest of his life. In the Conclave, time was never a line: it was a tangled rope others unraveled for him.

  He blinked.

  When he raised his eyes again, he was no longer before Soro.

  The smell of incense was still there, thicker now, denser, mixed with the sweat of many people in an enclosed space. The ritual chamber was smaller, without columns, without windows. Only old stone walls and symbols carved to the point of erasure. In the center, surrounded by a circle of dark robes, was the bound man.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Rheda recognized the rope. The same ritual fiber as always, tied in the same points: wrists, ankles, chest. It wasn’t meant to restrain the body; it was meant to tie him to the moment.

  He was surprised to discover that his own hand was already holding the knife.

  The bone handle fit perfectly between his fingers, as if he had been gripping it since another century. The blade, thin and clean, reflected the flickering lights of the braziers. It looked like a line of water cutting the air.

  “Rheda,” Arktrup’s voice said behind him, serene and implacable. “You already know why we’re here.”

  He swallowed. His heart pounded, not from fear of the act, but from the deeper terror of making a mistake in something already decided.

  The bound man lifted his head.

  There was no terror in his eyes. Not even resignation. There was calm. A calm almost obscene in that context, as if he were in a sunny courtyard resting after a day’s work. When he saw Rheda, he smiled. A small, honest smile.

  Rheda felt his throat burn.

  I don’t see time, he thought. Not like Arktrup. Not like the seers. Not like… him.

  Him. Chronos.

  Arktrup and the others called him that when speaking in hushed tones: Chronos, the one who had already walked the wheel, who had seen the full cycle and returned with empty hands filled with answers. Not a god, they said, but revered as if he were one. A living proof that the future was not a gamble, but a cursed map.

  Rheda had never seen the waters show him anything. He had not tasted the liquid boxes of knowledge; he had not felt the tearing in the mind from a thousand possible futures. His gift was another: remembering precisely what those who had gazed into the abyss of time told him.

  And Arktrup had been clear. And his words had been those of Chronos.

  “Selion must die here,” the master had said hours earlier, when the chamber was still empty. “We must obey time. The wheel must keep turning. We see it in the waters. Chronos confirmed it.”

  Rheda had nodded then, almost feeling calm. It was a simple equation: necessary death, useful death. Nothing new to the Conclave.

  But now, before those calm eyes and that serene smile, the equation became flesh.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Selion murmured, barely audible, as if speaking only to him and not the entire room. “I came here for this.”

  Rheda felt himself step back, though his feet didn’t move.

  “It’s… it’s not fear,” he answered, voice rougher than he expected. “It’s… respect.”

  The circle of robes did not move. No one interrupted. No one hurried him. The Conclave knew that even doubt was part of the order they claimed to serve.

  Arktrup spoke then, with that calm that always sounded like a verdict:

  “Chronos already saw him die in this place, Rheda. We are only walking in his footsteps. If you do not make the cut, time will seek another path. And that path will be the abyss.”

  Rheda closed his eyes for a moment. He saw Soro, motionless on the bench, unaware of himself. He saw Lupers falling in another chamber, in another cycle, with the same absurd dignity. He saw the agitated waters he could not read, but trusted as a child trusted a father’s voice.

  I do not see time, he repeated. But they do. Arktrup saw it. Chronos walked it. I’m not deciding anything. I’m just occupying the place that’s mine.

  He opened his eyes.

  Selion was still smiling. There was something almost sad in that peace, as if he knew Rheda would bear more weight than he ever would.

  “Thank you,” whispered the condemned man.

  Rheda frowned.

  “Why…?”

  “Because someone must obey time,” the man replied, unwavering. “And now I am part of it.”

  The words pierced him. Rheda felt the tremor in the hand holding the knife. For a second, he imagined what would happen if he let it fall. If he cut the ropes, if he shouted that everything was a lie, that the future wasn’t worth this price.

  But the echo of Arktrup’s voice, the distant shadow of Chronos, the invisible weight of cycles already lived piled onto his shoulders.

  If he doubted, he denied everything he had built his life upon.

  He drew a deep breath.

  He stepped forward.

  The Conclave bowed slightly, like a black wave.

  Rheda placed his free hand on the man’s shoulder, almost as a gesture of comfort. He felt the heat of his skin, the firm pulse beneath the clothes.

  “May time receive you,” he murmured, unsure if it was the correct phrase or one he had just invented.

  Selion nodded, still smiling.

  Rheda lifted the knife.

  It wasn’t a clumsy cut. The blade found the precise place, just as he had been taught. A swift, exact movement that left no room for regret.

  Blood surged warm and wet, and the body dropped against the bindings, now useless. The braziers crackled, as if the air’s density had shifted.

  For a moment, silence was absolute.

  Rheda felt his knees weaken, but he stayed upright. He looked at the dead man, the face still holding the shadow of a smile, and forced himself to memorize it. That was the price. That was the coin with which the Conclave bought its certainty.

  Arktrup spoke one last time, breaking the void:

  “Thus the cycle is kept. Thus the path for Soro opens. And thus, step by step, Chronos reaches where he must go.”

  Rheda did not answer.

  He only cleaned the knife with steady hands, while a single thought hammered in his mind:

  If time orders it and Chronos confirms it… then I am only a tool.

  And tools do not doubt.

  They only cut.