Chapter 1: Chapter 1: The Chronomancer’s Apprentice

They say that the old eras of magic, monsters, and parties of adventurers are finally over once and for all. In part, that’s probably true.

Those bygone days haven’t died out because of some great, dramatic cataclysm that brought about a bright new era in its passing. Rather, time has simply moved on. The war did see to it that this transition happened quickly in the end, yes, but it was happening even before the war began. Year after year, the old way of doing things had already all been grinding to a mulching, slow end within the constantly quickening churning of new machines releasing pillars of steam and coal smoke into the sky.

Factories, industry, and the march of progress have now made redundant the ethereal concepts of wonder and majesty.

Adventuring, as a trade, has been mostly replaced by factory work. It’s safer. The deep dungeons and caves that used to be plundered have lost favour to labour in the mines, since they don’t have any monsters in them, at least. And even the art of magical spellcasting no longer holds the associated societal wonder and fascination it once had, as the practice has been homogenised via military-government education programmes and uniformly standardised schools across the nation.

The air in the city of Hafen tastes of factory off-gassing and roasted nuts, as it is the season for the city’s primary harvest to begin processing. This combination produces a thick and heavy stew of smells that sticks to the back of the throat. It clings to the damp, cold stone of the buildings, to the hurried shoulders of merchants, and to the gilded armour of the last few relics of the past who refuse to take off their out-of-fashion pieces of armour in favour of tunics and caps. Like many others, the city was once built around the dungeon, an endlessly deep hole full of monsters and treasure. In the past, this was a source of endless prosperity. These days, it’s just another uninteresting historical ruin. The street lamps pulse with soft light, their oil-flame radiance mixing in with the shine of sparsely distributed emergency-lighting crystals, radiating with soft pulses of mana energy. The scent of ozone from enchantments placed on lathes rather than swords mingles with the danker smell of tamed beasts that pull cargo waggons through streets still bearing scorch marks from last year's siege.

Just beneath it all is the ever-present, coppery tang of spilt blood, quickly washed away by the fountains all around the city put up in a post-war relief effort, but never truly gone.

Hafen is a vibrant, monstrous engine of the nation’s economy powered by nuts, gold and glory, and it has no eyes for the ghosts that linger in its alleyways.

Ghosts do not contribute productively to the market economy. Therefore, they are undesirable.

One such undesired creature is a girl called Ananke, who also happens to be allergic to nuts.

The unremarkable normal girl sits in her usual spot, the narrow alley behind the nearly out-of-business Adventurer’s Guild, where the high walls offer a sliver of shelter from the wind and the discarded trash sometimes yields a half-edible prize. Her frame is thin, gaunt from a year and a half of meals that were more idea than substance. She has a small scar along her neck that she doesn’t remember getting that itches sometimes. It looks like someone scratched her. Mousey brown hair, lank and unwashed, frames a face that is dominated by ever-searching soulful brown eyes as she holds a mostly empty bowl out toward the people passing her by. She’s good at keeping that little spark in her eyes, if just for show.

That’s the trick she uses to survive. People donate more often if you don’t look like you’re dead inside.

She’s seen it happen to the others. The moment you visibly let the light go out, people have a way of sensing that somehow. The alms stop coming because nobody wants to waste their hard-earned wealth on a lost cause.

Why donate to someone who’s already dead?

Today, the hurt is winning, though. The determined glint has been smothered by a grey fatigue, not unlike the miasma in the air. Her stomach is a tight knot, but the ache in her chest is far, far worse. It is a profound, weary sadness that has settled in for good these last few days after nearly two years of festering in her guts.

The war is over, but it took most everything from her and whatever was left over inside of her just slowly decayed after that until today.

Setting her bowl away, she pushes herself up from the hard ground. Usually, she has nothing to do all day except beg and scavenge. But today, she has somewhere to be. That makes it a special day indeed, as she usually has no obligations at all except to prepare to survive another cold night alone.

Ananke doesn’t head toward the market square where the crowds are thickest. Instead, she turns toward the river, toward the old stone bridge that arches over the choppy, grey water that runs surprisingly fast and deep. The river is the pride of Hafen’s industry, with the forceful current spinning waterwheels by the hundreds all along its bank for as far as the eye can see.

A group of laughing dwarves clank past, arguing over the value of a gemstone. A pair of discharged soldiers, still wearing their faded military tabards, share a bottle of cheap wine and speak in hushed tones about the last, lingering enemy insurgent camps that were finally raided last month, bringing a full end to all Arkonian hostilities against their nation. A tall elf with a frost-tipped spear ignores a merchant’s desperate pitch. Ananke moves through them all, fully untouched by the noise, the colour, and the life of the city she haunts.

“I heard they found another one,” says a man to his compatriot as they pass each other by.

The second man shakes his head. “Probably more down there. They only just found the one,” he remarks in reply. “That crap’s why I only drink from the well,” he says, as if the bodies were the worst thing in the river.

On her way, Ananke stops to look through the sagging glass window of a bookshop in her daily tradition to stare at the ones on display. Sometimes, the shop’s owner will have a book there splayed open to the middle of it to show off the writing inside for any potential customers, but she uses it as her only chance to read. Oftentimes the context makes no sense, given that she can only ever see two middle pages from an entire tome. But it’s the only thing she can get. Books are expensive.

However, today, the books are all closed inside of the display window. There’s one there on display, but closed, sitting next to a little decorative rag doll. The cover looks interesting, but only interesting enough to keep her attention for a moment.

‘Humunculi: The Search for New Life’.

Her hand slides off of the worn imprints in the glass and she moves along while behind her ring out the sounds of construction work. A team is setting up a scaffold at the exterior of the large cathedral in the city square she’s just coming out from.

But she can only focus on hearing the nearby water.

image [https://i.imgur.com/pUoDcs0.png]

Ananke never makes it, stopping abruptly before her goal.

Some woman is suddenly there, blocking the path not twenty paces from the bridge’s entrance. She is not remarkable to look at but familiar in a way Ananke can’t explain. Her clothes are simple, and her features are soft and kind. But her eyes hold a depth, a strange, piercing awareness as they fix on Ananke. She feels like she’s seen her before.

“The bridge is out today, girl,” the woman says, her voice calm and melodic. “You should go back the way you came,” she suggests.

Ananke freezes. She stares, awkward and confused. The bridge looks solid, entire. She can see people crossing it. “It… it looks fine,” she mutters.

“Nonetheless,” the woman insists gently, not unkindly. She reaches out and takes Ananke’s hand, turning it over and placing a single, heavy silver coin into her palm. The metal is warm from the woman’s touch. She looks at it in surprise. It’s a five-obol denomination, equivalent to a day’s meal and bed if you have a pauper’s standards. “Go back.”

The contact is so unfamiliar, the generous gesture so utterly unexpected, that it short-circuits the dark current pulling Ananke forward for a moment. She’s never gotten a five before. Usually it’s just a one- or two-obol coin tossed her way.

She doesn’t understand.

Ananke looks from the coin to the woman’s face. The spell is broken, in part because of the kind gesture.

But also in part because Ananke has a hard time with conflicts and even if what the woman is saying is total, easily deniable nonsense, she doesn’t have the confidence to call her out on it. Somehow, as dumb as it sounds, going back to her miserable existence feels less daunting than getting into an argument with a stranger.

So, mutely, Ananke nods, closing her fingers around the coin. She turns around and walks away, the weight of the silver in her hand an anchor dragging her back from the edge rather than under the water she had been hoping to jump into today.

Somewhere off on the bridge, however, a dark shape in a dark robe watches from afar, their thick, wide scarf that covers their mouth and nose blowing in the wind. The older woman turns her head, looking back at them.

image [https://i.imgur.com/pUoDcs0.png]

Ananke doesn’t know how long she walks, her mind a numb, buzzing blank. She finds herself back in a bustling thoroughfare, her body automatically assuming the posture of a beggar, her eyes downcast. She holds up the silver coin, not to spend it, but with the intent to add it to her own bowl when she starts working to make her look like she’s a successful beggar, worthy of more alms.

Lesson two of begging is that people give you more money if you already have some. It seems to be a paradox, but a bowl with a few coins in it fills faster than one that is empty. Nobody wants to be the first to give someone money. But if they think someone else has already done so, then you must be alright to give something to.

It’s strange. She doesn’t get it. But that’s how it works.

The cathedral looms ahead, its ancient stone bones wrapped in a skeleton of wooden scaffolding. The reconstruction has been ongoing since the end of the successful war against the Arkon nation. Workers crawl across the framework like ants, their hammers ringing against stones and steel bolts.

She still remembers the night the attack happened, when the blasts hit the city, the cathedral.

Suddenly, a shrill, inhuman screech suddenly pierces the air.

An anqa, one of the massive, bipedal birds used for heavy labour throughout the city, comes careening around the corner in a blind panic, towering over the heads of the crowd with its long neck. Its ornate blue and gold plumage is singed, smoke rising from its feathers that had got too close to an open flame. Its curved beak is open in a continuous, ear-splitting cry of terror. The large animal is in a panic, stampeding as if completely maddened.

The bird barrels directly into a fruit vendor's stall. The wooden cart disintegrates under the impact, sending a cascade of apples and pears rolling across the cobblestones. The vendor shouts in alarm. The oil lanterns hanging from the stall's frame swing wildly, their flames licking hungrily at the canvas awning.

Fire catches. Spreads. It takes two seconds at most.

People scream. The crowd that had been peacefully milling about the cathedral square suddenly becomes a mob in a flash of an instant, acting as a panicked mass of bodies surging away from the flames. They push, shove, and trample anything in their path. Their terror is contagious, spreading faster than the fire itself does until even the edge of the crowd, nowhere near any danger, has become a dangerous tsunami of bodies.

The human tide crashes against the cathedral's scaffolding.

Ananke watches in horror as the framework shudders under the impact. Too many people. Too much force. The joints strain. The supports groan.

And then, with a sound like the world breaking, it all comes down.

Massive wooden beams plummet from impossible heights. Stone blocks, recently lifted and not yet secured, follow them down. Metal rods, scaffolding poles, and a rain of smaller debris cascade toward the square in a deadly avalanche. Workers cry out in terror as they plummet to their inevitable deaths. She throws her arms over her head and squeezes her eyes shut, waiting for the impact.

But nothing happens.

The world goes utterly, completely silent.

Slowly, afraid of what she might see, Ananke opens her eyes again.

An iron rod hangs in the air, an inch above her head, frozen in mid-fall. Its point is aimed precisely where her crown would have been. She immediately jumps to the side, out of the way.

The rod doesn’t move. It stays there, suspended, like a thrusted spear from an archangel with no devil below it left to strike down.

It’s all stuck. It’s all… frozen.

Around her, the dynamic catastrophe has become a sculpture.

Falling debris hangs suspended like men strung from long nooses. People are caught mid-scream, their faces twisted in terror, their bodies contorted in impossible poses of flight. Objects hang suspended in impossible arrangements. A dropped coin is frozen mid-spin, and steam from a jostled teacup is curled into perfect, motionless spirals. A tongue of flame reaches from an overturned lantern, but it doesn't move or spread at all. It simply is, a bright orange summer flower blooming in the still air. It’s like a piece of an oil painting, plastered right into the world.

“What… what?” she mutters, her quiet voice very loud in contrast to the absolute silence.

She steps carefully outward, her movements the only things disturbing the frozen tableau. “Hello?” she asks, pulling on somebody’s tunic. He doesn’t respond. Ananke’s heart pounds against her ribs, but the sensation doesn't seem to travel beyond her own body. She looks around the paused anarchy, trying to make sense of it.

And then, she hears it. It’s faint but unmistakable.

Humming.

Someone is humming a jaunty little song, a cheerful melody that belongs in an empty tavern during a warm day. The sound clearly comes from somewhere in the crowd.

Confused, she turns in a slow circle, searching for the source.

There. In the distance, moving through the mass of petrified bodies, she spots someone. A man.

A fully-obscured stranger, cloaked and hooded, with a wide-brimmed hat that shadows his features completely. Every inch of his body is covered by some kind of wrap of cloth or roll of leather. He moves through the frozen crowd with loose, playful steps, like a bored dancer wandering through his house during a slow afternoon. His movements are fluid, graceful, and utterly at ease. He floats from spot to spot, reaching out to touch the paralysed people, rearranging them with casual precision as if they were dolls in a showroom.

With a theatrical spin, he lifts a man's arm that had been about to strike a child in his panicked flight. With a twirl, the humming man ducks down and grasps that same child, nudging them three steps to the left, out of harm's way. Around him, dust motes hang in impossible spirals, rotating slowly in defiance of gravity. The air itself seems to shimmer with prismatic distortions, like heat waves made visible during an explosion.

He rises up in a floating manner, studying his handiwork. After a while, he seems content and moves on. His attention turns to a street sign that had been knocked askew in the panic. He walks over to it and, with some visible effort, rearranges the wooden posts so they point in entirely different directions.

All the while, the stranger continues his cheerful humming.

Ananke stares from her distant vantage point. He is the only other moving thing in this frozen world apart from herself. The only other person who, like her, seems unaffected by whatever impossible force has claimed the city. But what is he doing?

After a few moments more of that, he pauses in his work and looks around, studying his environment with the air of an artist examining his canvas. His gaze sweeps across the marketplace.

Their eyes meet.

Ananke freezes, not from magic but from instinct. She holds perfectly still, her breath caught in her throat, trying to blend in with the petrified crowd around her. She doesn't know if he can tell the difference between her stillness and theirs, but she doesn’t want to be seen. She’s not sure why. But she feels like he’s not expecting anyone else to be moving here except him.

The man stares at her across the span of the frozen marketplace. She can feel his attention like a physical weight, studying her, evaluating her. She keeps perfectly still, not daring to even blink.

The moment stretches.

He seems content with whatever he was watching and then raises a hand and snaps his fingers.

Reality crashes back into motion with an explosion of sound and fury.

The metal rod slams into the cobblestones where she had been standing a second ago, embedding itself deep in the stone with a crack like thunder. The scaffold finishes its collapse with a roar of splintering wood and crashing stone. The falling men grab ropes and each other, clinging on for life. The crowd scream and run, their terror given voice again.

Everything is different now.

Ananke watches in fascination as the elements the stranger had rearranged come into play, creating an entirely new outcome from the same disaster than would have happened.

People follow the changed street sign and break off down a side street, just as an explosion rocks the square. The lantern fire has reached some barrels of oil, igniting them in a blast of flame and smoke that engulfs the exact path the crowd would have taken. They escape the inferno by mere seconds, guided by signs that now point to safety instead of what would have been a death trap.

The child that had been moved stumbles, bumping into a baker’s wife who sees the small figure about to be trampled by the fleeing mob. Without hesitation, the woman scoops the child up and runs with them cradled safely in her arms.

The man whose arm had been lifted inadvertently changes his panicked trajectory, his attention drawn by the altered position of his limb as he stumbles. He notices an open hole in the ground where sewer workers had been labouring and swings wide to avoid it, saving himself from a potentially fatal fall.

And through all the mayhem and chaos, the crowd flows around the humming man as if he were simply another piece of architecture. They don't see him, don't notice him, and don't react to his presence at all.

He stands in the centre of the catastrophe, watching the results of his subtle manipulations with what seems like quiet satisfaction as he lifts an arm and drifts a leg, moving like a spirit in the wind and begins moving in the opposite direction from the fleeing crowd against the current of panic with serenity. The sound of his humming reaches her ears one last time before it fades into the cacophony of voices and distant flames.

Ananke stands transfixed, staring at the space where he had been. What just happened?

A piece of burning debris falls uncomfortably close to her feet, jolting her back to the immediate danger. She hurries away from the cathedral square, her mind reeling with questions that have no rational answers.

image [https://i.imgur.com/pUoDcs0.png]

A day has passed since the event.

Ananke sits in her usual spot outside the adventurer's guild, her worn wooden bowl resting between her knees, collecting the occasional copper obol that drops from a generous hand. The silver coin the woman gave her is sitting inside of it like a majestic centrepiece.

The city moves around her with its usual rhythm, but something feels different in the air. People talk in hushed, excited tones about yesterday's disaster at the cathedral. They speak of it as a miracle, a near-catastrophe turned into something almost mystical.

“Can you believe nobody died?” a merchant says to his companion as they pass. “That fire could have taken a hundred souls easily.”

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“The gods were watching,” his friend replies with a shake of his head. “I’ll be paying tithes this month, I promise you that,” he says earnestly, but his friend nonetheless laughs at the absurd notion.

Ananke listens to these conversations with a tight knot in her stomach. She knows it wasn't luck. She knows it wasn't the gods.

It was him.

The Humming Man, the stranger in the wide-brimmed hat who moved through frozen time like a conductor orchestrating a hidden symphony.

But nobody else remembers the pause.

Nobody else saw what she saw.

She hasn't seen him since. Part of her wonders if she imagined it all, if the stress and hunger finally drove her to hallucinations. But the memory is too vivid and too precise to be fake. The feeling of that suspended moment is burnt into her mind like a brand’s mark.

A pair of figures approaches, and she automatically holds up her bowl with practised, downcast humility. A blonde-haired adventurer passes by, his leather armour deeply out of vogue. A tiny fairy sits perched on his shoulder, her gossamer wings catching the morning light.

“Monsters are getting out of hand these days,” the adventurer says to his diminutive companion. “Something's not right in the dungeon.”

“What isn't weird these days?” the fairy retorts, her voice carrying a bored, almost jaded tone that seems strange coming from such a delicate creature.

Ananke watches them go. She wishes she was strong enough to be an adventurer, to make her living killing monsters in the depths below the city. That would be better than this. The dungeon's treasures could buy her a life beyond begging, beyond the constant edge of starvation. But she is too malnourished to be a physical threat to anything larger than a rat, and she's never manifested any particular magical talent. The factories won’t take her for the same reason. Her only real skill is literacy, a gift her mother had given her before the war took her.

She tries not to think about it.

image [https://i.imgur.com/pUoDcs0.png]

The day progresses with painful familiarity. A few spare coins find their way into her bowl, but not nearly enough for anything substantial. When evening comes, she retreats to her hiding place, a small nook she's carved out between old crates and refuse. Her stomach is a hollow ache, but exhaustion wins over hunger, and she curls up in her makeshift bed.

She's just beginning to drift off when the noise starts.

There’s a rumbling, a rupture.

Voices fill the air. They’re urgent and panicked. Screams seem to come from every direction at once. Suddenly, bright lights flash outside her shelter, casting wild shadows through the gaps in the crates.

Something is happening, something big and terrible.

Ananke sits up, her heart pounding, trying to understand what's going on. But the moment she fully awakens, the chaos simply… stops.

The screams cut off mid-note. The lights vanish. And suddenly, impossibly, she's staring at daylight streaming through her shelter.

It's as if the entire night has been erased, replaced in an instant by morning before she even had the chance to get out from the scraps of fabric she sleeps on.

She rubs her tired eyes, more certain now than before that she really must be delirious from hunger. She must have been dreaming, caught in some fever-induced nightmare.

Shaking her head, she crawls out of her shelter and makes her way to the fountain outside the guild. The cold water on her face helps clear her thoughts, and she drinks deeply, trying to wash away the lingering confusion. Then, with practised resignation, she takes her place and begins another day of begging.

The same pair of figures approaches as yesterday. The blonde adventurer with his fairy companion, their conversation carrying clearly in the morning air.

“Monsters are getting out of hand these days,” the adventurer says. “Something's not right in the dungeon.”

“What isn't weird these days?” the fairy replies, her voice carrying the exact same bored inflection.

Ananke stares after them, confused as she thinks about what she just heard. The words are identical. Not similar, not close. They’re exactly the same, spoken with the same tone, the same timing, and the same casual dismissal.

A powerful feeling of déjà vu washes over her.

As the day unfolds, she pays attention to details she normally wouldn't notice. The merchant who spills his tea at precisely the same moment as she remembers. The dog that barks at the same cat in the same doorway. The guild member who drops the same piece of parchment at the same spot on the steps before hurrying inside for an interview he is late for.

Everything repeats with mechanical precision, like actors performing the same play for the thousandth time.

What is going on?

When night falls, she doesn't retreat to her shelter. Instead, she climbs up onto the rooftop of the adventurer's guild, a route she's discovered during her hungriest nights when sleep wouldn't come. From here, she can see most of the city spread out below her as a patchwork of flickering lights and moving shadows and above her are the stars and the moon. It’s a romantic sight that does nothing to fill her stomach, but it does fill her eyes and head. She settles against the chimney to wait, though for what, she isn't entirely sure.

Below her, a man walks by with a large, green bag. She recognises him but pays him no further mind as he goes about his night.

Nothing happens.

The city settles into its nighttime rhythm, the sounds growing quieter and more distant. The cold wind touches her hair, carrying the familiar scents of coal smoke and distant cooking fires. She begins to wonder if she's wasting her time.

But then she hears it.

A humming.

Low and tuneless, like a vibration in the air itself. It's him. She’s only heard it once, but she recognises it immediately. Her heart leaps, and she quickly scrambles to the edge of the rooftop, gripping the chimney for support as she stares out toward the source of the sound.

There, several intersections away down the main street, she can see him. The Humming Man, moving through the nighttime city with his apparently characteristic, flowing gait. He’s graceful. But this time is different than the last time she saw him. Time isn't frozen. The world continues to move around him. This is not evidenced by people, as the streets are otherwise empty, but by the wind she can feel in her hair and on her skin.

His movements tonight seem more urgent, more frenzied than they had been at the cathedral. He darts from place to place, adjusting and arranging, his hands moving in complex patterns as he works toward some unseen end. She can see the intensity in his posture, the way he pauses to study his handiwork before moving on to the next adjustment.

Then, it happens. The thing she was waiting for.

It’s the same thing that happened last night.

A burst of energy erupts from the heart of the city, where the dungeon entrance lies beneath the guild district. The blast is like nothing she has ever seen before. A wave of raw magical force rips through buildings and houses with destructive power that doesn’t give anyone inside even a chance to scream. Light, energy, and burning cinders shoot through the air in a blinding flash that turns the night white for one terrible moment. Against the backdrop of the explosion, she sees them. Thousands of silhouettes pouring out from the underground breach, monsters of every description escaping into the city above from the dungeon that makes up the focal point of the event.

Goblins, trolls, beasts and things she cannot name flood the streets as shadows just behind the light. The monsters of the old world.

A second later, the shockwave hits the guild building like a giant's fist come to smash her.

Ananke screams as she's thrown from the high rooftop, her grip on the chimney torn away by the impossible wash of energy. She plummets towards the cobblestones below, the ground rushing up to meet her with very fatal certainty.

There is a single, sharp sound in the distance. Like someone snapping their fingers.

image [https://i.imgur.com/pUoDcs0.png]

Ananke jolts upright in her bedding, gasping as if she's been drowning. She looks around wildly, her heart hammering against her ribs. She's back in her shelter, surrounded by the familiar crates and refuse. Pale morning light filters through the gaps between rooftops, and the sounds of the waking city drift in from outside her shelter.

It's the same morning. Again.

She scrambles out of her hiding place and runs to the fountain with frantic and desperate movements. Her eyes scan the area.

Nothing is destroyed. Everything is as it should be.

She splashes water on her face and drinks, but the familiar routine feels wrong now. She takes her position and waits, her eyes fixed on the approaching figures.

The blonde adventurer and his fairy companion walk by, their conversation beginning exactly as she knew it would.

“Monsters are getting out of hand these days,” the adventurer says. “Something's not right in the dungeon.”

“What isn't weird these days?” the fairy replies.

Time is repeating itself.

It’s the same day, over and over again, like a broken clockwork mechanism stuck on a single, endless note.

And somehow, impossibly, she's the only one who seems to know.

At least apart from one other person.

image [https://i.imgur.com/pUoDcs0.png]

For several repeating days, Ananke becomes something she has never been before: a hunter. Each morning brings the same dawn, the same conversations, and the same mechanical repetition of events, but each night offers her a new chance to study her quarry.

The Humming Man moves through the city's darkened streets with some unknown purpose, and she follows at a distance, learning the rhythm of his work.

Every night ends the same, with an explosion that takes the city.

No matter where he is, she can always find him because of the humming. She's not sure why or how, but his voice cuts through the city's noise with crystal clarity, reaching her ears no matter how far away he is. The low, tuneless melody draws her forward through winding alleys and across moonlit squares. She is pulled to it, drawn to the sound through the urban maze with the instinct of a spider following vibrations in its web's threads.

She can sense him, feel his presence humming in her bones.

Each night, she watches him try different approaches to reach whatever his goal is. She thinks he’s trying to stop the explosion from happening. Sometimes he works near the guild district, rearranging street signs and adjusting the positions of sleeping vagrants. Other nights, he travels to the far side of the city, manipulating merchants' stalls or altering the flow of a fountain. His methods are endlessly varied, but his target seems consistent. There’s something about the dungeon, something about preventing the catastrophic breach that comes every night without fail, that seems to be his final aim.

But every night, he fails.

Every night, the dungeon erupts in that same devastating blast of magical energy, releasing its tide of monsters into the streets above. And every night, she feels the world snap backward, time folding in on itself as the Humming Man resets the day to try again.

He can control time, somehow. He can send them back so he can try again.

She herself becomes obsessed with the puzzle he's trying to solve. She doesn't eat anymore. There's no point when the day will reset and take her hunger with it. She doesn't sleep. Rest is meaningless when dawn will find her in the same alley regardless. All she thinks about is this great mystery.

It’s the first thing that has sparked something in her core ever since the war.

During the daylight hours, when the repeated conversations and familiar events play out around her, she lets her mind work on the problem.

‘Dungeon breaks’, as they are called, are rare events, she knows from overhearing countless adventurer conversations. They happen when a dungeon becomes overloaded with monsters or magical energy and releases all of it in an outward, catastrophic blast. Everything usually contained safely underground ruptures to the surface in an apocalyptic force.

But what would possibly trigger such an event at night, when everyone is asleep and the dungeon is mostly dormant, especially in this day and age?

There's something wrong with that pattern. There's something that doesn't fit.

image [https://i.imgur.com/pUoDcs0.png]

She’s lost count of days. It’s been a few weeks of the time loop, maybe.

Ananke finds herself standing outside the bookshop window that she had lost fascination in because of her new interest, staring at the display beyond the glass as she is desperate for ideas.

Her eyes widen as they fix on a particular volume that she has been constantly overlooking in her excitement to study literally everything else in the world. A thick tome on maritime warfare, of all things, is there. The price tag makes her stomach clench. It’s nearly a thousand Obols. She could never afford such a thing in a lifetime of begging, maybe not even in ten lifetimes.

The thought of stealing it flickers through her mind, at least somewhere in it. She could probably slip inside during the morning rush, when the shopkeeper is distracted.

After all, if time resets today, what would it even matter?

She could read the book, keep the knowledge, and by tomorrow morning it will be as if nothing ever happened except for the fact that she got to have something nice for a change. It’s a hard thought to argue with. There’s no harm, right?

…Maybe… Maybe she could do other things? Ananke’s eyes turn away from the window, looking toward the many people all around who have purses and bags full of coins that would let her live like a queen for one day. And then, by tomorrow, it will be as if nothing had happened other than her having a nice memory.

Nobody will have been harmed. It’s victimless. She could do anything she wanted, right? Anything.

Slowly, her eyes turn back to the bookshop window. Her pupils widen, and her gaze finds a line in the middle of the open book, visible through the glass display. It’s a chapter about pirates and their tactics.

Her face lights up with sudden understanding as a revelation hits her regarding the night event.

She runs from the bookshop, her mind racing with possibilities. It isn't what he thinks is happening. The dungeon break isn't what it appears to be.

And as for any ideas regarding her potential personal desires other than this one… they are waylaid for the time being. It’s hard for her to say if it’s because she found something better to do or if it’s because she’s really too good a person for something like that.

For now, she doesn’t have to find out.

image [https://i.imgur.com/pUoDcs0.png]

Ananke sprints through the streets, her bare feet slapping against cold cobblestones. She climbs onto the rim of the central fountain, ignoring the odd looks from passersby as she surveys the marketplace with new eyes. She traces the flow of people, the patterns of movement, following the main thoroughfare down toward the dungeon district.

It's just as the book described. It offers the perfect setup.

She jumps down from the fountain and runs through the crowd, her mind cataloguing details she'll need for tonight. A few merchants shout at her to watch where she's going, but she barely hears them. All her attention is focused on the roads leading to the dungeon, on the sight lines and escape routes, and on the careful choreography of urban life that someone could exploit with the right motivations.

image [https://i.imgur.com/pUoDcs0.png]

When night falls, she makes her way into the darkness. The familiar sound of humming drifts through the air, but tonight she doesn't follow it. Instead, she sets to work on her own preparations. Her fingers work quickly, loosening the bolts on a parked carriage just enough to make it unstable. She pries up a manhole cover, leaving it askew and dangerous. A lantern here, a length of rope there, seemingly random adjustments that won't make sense to anyone watching.

It's almost time.

She retreats to the shadows near the guild entrance and waits.

And just like every night before, a man with a green canvas bag walks past the guild. She always thought he was just going home from the mills. But instead of entering the guild or a house, he heads toward the dungeon.

She observes him carefully this time, noting details she had missed in previous loops.

Crystal shards jut from his bag, catching the moonlight with ominous glints. There's an audible clinking as he walks, the sound of glass and metal components shifting against each other. His steps have a clear purpose and don’t carry the energy of a tired man coming back from a long day at work.

They’re the steps of a man with a mission.

He's the reason.

The catastrophe isn't the dungeon rupturing on its own and destroying the city in some unfortunate natural disaster. It's lashing out because someone is making it lash out, someone is overloading it.

She gulps, taking a deep breath, and then steps out of her hiding place. She's not sure this is a good idea, but she has to try.

“Stop!” she calls out into the night. The stranger snaps his head around, looking at her with immediate paranoia as he sizes up the girl half his size. His hand moves instinctively toward the bag at his side. “I know what you're doing,” she says, her voice carrying more conviction than she feels.

He looks around them, scanning for witnesses or threats, then steps back from her. “Mind your business, girl.”

“The guards are on their way!” she lies, hoping her voice doesn't betray her terror. “There's no point in ru-”

He runs.

Ananke stares there, staring.

Honestly, she wasn’t expecting that to work.

The man takes off, bolting toward the dungeon entrance. But Ananke has planned for this, taking great inspiration from the Humming Man’s methods. He stumbles over the wire she laid across his path, crying out in surprise. The wire pulls on a carriage’s brake lever. The loosened carriage begins to roll, its wheels grinding against stone as it picks up momentum. She chases after him, certain her trap will work, that the rolling vehicle will block his escape.

But the man is agile and trained in ways she hadn't anticipated.

He vaults clean through the carriage's path, using the vehicle itself as a stepping stone with a movement so agile and professional that it breaks her understanding of what the body can do just by watching him soar over it. She can only stumble and stare in awe as he navigates the chaos she's created, avoiding her carefully placed obstacles with ease. He leaps over the displaced manhole cover pit, ducks the rope between the street lanterns, and continues his sprint toward the dungeon gates. She herself stumbles and trips, chasing after him. Her hand strikes a lantern, which falls into the open manhole during the commotion, igniting the flammable sewer gases below. A geyser of flame and shrapnel erupts into the night sky, raining cobblestone fragments down across the street from the force of the eruption. People look out of their windows from the commotion.

“Stop! Stop him!” she yells, scrambling up and running after the saboteur, her legs burning with effort she's not accustomed to. He’s much faster than she is. It’s hopeless.

The sound of humming grows louder as she approaches the dungeon district.

All around them, a symphony of strange events begins to unfold. The Humming Man's work for the night manifests in subtle ways. A loose cobblestone here, a startled cat there, and the precise placement of obstacles that should create the perfect intervention for some other event he was planning for.

But despite all his careful preparation, it looks like the man with the green bag is going to reach the dungeon entrance once again because he wasn’t planning on stopping him, of all things.

Then a fragment of cobblestone, one of the pieces launched by the prior sewer explosion, arcs down from the sky and strikes the running man on the head. He tumbles down to the street.

Panting, Ananke reaches the Humming Man just as the saboteur falls. She grabs his dark robes desperately, her small hands fisting in the heavy fabric. “It's not a dungeon break!” she yells at the humming stranger, pulling on his garments as he looks down at her in surprise for a variety of different reasons she doesn’t yet understand. For the first time since she's been observing him, his constant humming stops completely as she touches him and looks at him. Her eyes widen with panic as she tries to make him understand, pointing at the other man who groans and shifts. “It's a false flag attack!” she shouts, having picked up on the term as a common tactic pirates use to trick their enemies. “He's Arkonian. It's a bomb!”

The Humming Man follows her gaze to where the foreign operative sits dazed on the ground, fumbling with something that has spilt from his bag. Crystal shards lie scattered around him, along with what look like alchemical components and a flask filled with bubbling, luminescent liquid that falls onto a packed-away scarf.

“Oh…“ says the Humming Man, his voice carrying an almost jovial surprise at this grim revelation that she really wasn’t expecting. “Wow,” he says in an exhalation, planting his hands on his hips and shaking his head in pleasant surprise. “That's just neat!”

The wounded stranger looks up at her, his eyes focusing with grim determination. He holds the volatile flask in his hand, the magical energy within it pulsing with dangerous light.

“MIDNIGHT IS NOW!” he shouts into the void.

He smashes the flask against the cobblestones. A vivid, brilliant light bursts forward, consuming the darkness as the magical reaction explodes with devastating force. The payload in his backpack ignites, creating a massive detonation that swallows the night in white-hot radiance. Ananke's eyes flare blind from being so close to the blast, but she can see their silhouettes, hers and the Humming Man's, standing as two black shadows against the overwhelming brightness.

“See you tomorrow,” the Humming Man notes calmly.

Around them, the explosion itself begins to slow and distort, the blast wave becoming visible as rippling bands of compressed air. Fragments of debris hang motionless like a deadly constellation, and the very light of the blast starts to bend and twist into impossible geometric patterns.

There is a snapping sound, like fingers clicking in the distance.

image [https://i.imgur.com/pUoDcs0.png]

Ananke jolts upright from her sleep, finding herself back in her familiar alleyway. The day has reset again. But this time, something is different. She jumps up and runs to the street, climbing onto the fountain's rim to get a better view of the city.

In the distance, near the dungeon district, she can see a commotion.

City guards are swarming around a man who appears to have stumbled and fallen, his green bag spilling its contents across the street. Citizens point and shout in alarm as the guards examine what looks like bomb-making materials scattered on the cobblestones.

Ananke watches with growing excitement, her mind racing with the implications. But in her enthusiasm, she slips on the wet stone rim of the fountain and tumbles backward into the water with a tremendous splash.

She surfaces gasping, water streaming from her hair. Several passersby laugh at her predicament, but she barely notices. After she brushes her hair from her face, she's too busy staring at the robed figure now standing beside the fountain who wasn’t there before she closed her eyes for only a second.

The Humming Man himself is here, his wide-brimmed hat casting his face into shadow.

Not a single part of his body is visible under the heavy garmentry, as if he were hiding from the daylight. “I'm not going to stop that from happening,” he explains in a casual tone, loosely pointing a finger at her, his voice carrying the same giddy quality she's come to associate with his locomotions.

She can't help but let out a nervous, uneasy laugh of her own, partly from relief and partly from embarrassment at her undignified tumble.

His pointing finger is then met by the rest of his digits as he extends that gloved hand down toward her, holding it out with patient expectation. “You did well for your first time, unwound,” he says, studying her with what feels like profound interest.

She stares at him, then at his offered hand in confusion.

He lifts his hand an inch. “It’s very curious indeed that you’re here,” he muses. “- as I just so happen to need an apprentice, as fate would have it,” explains the Humming Man. “Are you, perchance, interested?” he asks, wiggling his outstretched fingers in the motion of a loose wave.

Ananke’s eyes go wide as the question reaches her, even if the implications have not really reached her yet.

He leans in. “Let me tell you up front, it’s a raw deal.” The Humming Man tilts his head slightly, his large hat sliding an inch to one side. “I won't pay you. You're going to die more times before you're done than most people do in a lifetime, and by this time half a year from now, I suspect you will have grown a deep hatred for slime.”

She opens her mouth, but only a wordless stutter emerges at first. She swallows, clearing her throat as her arm reaches out toward his.

“Do I… do I get a hat?” she asks, making an awkward joke.

“Absolutely not,” he replies with stern finality despite that, their hands locking as he helps her out of the water. “Only I may wear the hat,” he explains quickly and pointedly, as if this were the most serious matter in the world.

“…Is being paid at least negotiable?” she asks, finding a crack of a smile growing on her face for the first time in a very long time.

He claps his hands together in front of his face, his own seemingly ever-present happiness reflected in his eyes and voice. “No, it is not,” he replies very simply and dryly, without skipping a beat. “My old student would get jealous if I started paying you. So it’s best that you work for free.”

Their eyes meet through the shadow of his brim as she stands before him, dripping with water.

“- Ananke, chronomancer's apprentice,” he finishes, already knowing her name before she can even introduce herself. “It’s nice to meet you again for the first time.”

Something opens in her eyes, in her core.

The hollow ache that has lived in her chest for so long fills with something new that she can’t really describe. The feeling of it, the tickling sensation of it, overpowers the lingering gnawing ache that has been in her heart for so long and washes it away, at least for now.

It is hope.

“I accept,” she answers.

“I know,” he replies.