Chapter 47 Elariya #2
Magdalena was right. It was different here. I could sense the changes even stronger now that we were deeper inside the cave.
Magdalena focused on me again, her eyes bright in the dim glow. “Today,” she said, “you will not chase time. You will stand inside it and allow the continuum to guide you. Are you ready?”
I nodded. “I am.” Part of me was scared too, but that part needed to stay quiet.
“Let’s start with some balancing exercises to align with the continuum.” She spread out her arms and we followed. “Close your eyes and feel the air.”
I did as she instructed. The moment my fingers brushed the air a warm sensation swirled low in my chest. Then the hum beneath the stone sharpened, and something inside me answered it.
The threads I’d learned to harness didn’t feel distant here. They pressed close, grazing my skin like fine strands of silk drifting in water. I inhaled slowly and the feeling grew stronger.
It pulled at me. Not forward. Not backward. Outward.
As if every direction at once had opened and was waiting for me to choose.
“Do you feel it?” Magdalena asked.
“Yes.” Arielle and I answered in unison.
“Now open your eyes.”
I opened my eyes and there were threads everywhere.
We looked around completely overcome with awed.
Fine strands of gold stretched across the cavern, suspended in the air like a vast, intricate web.
Some ran straight and unwavering. Others forked, split, rejoined, spiraled.
They crossed above us, beneath us, through us—so numerous and interwoven that for a dizzying moment I couldn’t tell where one ended and another began.
It was a picture-perfect vision of the night sky turned inside out.
A constellation of time.
I lifted my hand slowly and the threads nearest to me trembled in response.
“Come let us go further in, this is just the beginning.” Magdalena waved us forward and continued on the path.
We followed.
The cave grew wider the deeper we went, and the threads multiplied. We stopped in a wide, spacious cavern that was as big as a field and had a lake running through it.
I gasped at the sight, not expecting to find something of this magnitude inside here.
“My gosh. It’s so… wow,” I stuttered.
“And there’s more, you could spend days inside this place and never reach the end,” Arielle explained.
“It’s true,” Magdalena agreed. “I’ve never known anyone to reach the end. Some say there is none, that the cave continues into the eternities because of the strong time magic.”
“It sounds like you could get lost here,” I noted gazing down the darkest path.
“You could,” Magdalena replied. “So because of the magic we’ll be using we’ll stop here. I wouldn’t want you to drift away and be lost to time.”
I shook my head. “No, I would not like that either.”
Magdalena stepped toward the edge of the lake, where the golden threads dipped low enough to graze the water’s surface.
“Come forward and choose one thread.” She pointed toward the cluster beside her. “Not the brightest. Not the loudest. The quietest. Pick it and hold it.”
I swallowed hard, not certain how I was going to tell which was the quietest. I glanced at Arielle and she gave me a reassuring nod.
I stepped forward and made my way over to Magdalena.
The threads hummed as I approached, then they pulsed as if demanding my attention. I inspected them, trying to find the quietest, but it was near impossible.
“Focus Elariya. Focus.”
I focused and quieted my mind. Maybe I could hear it then.
I looked through the threads again and in realized something. There was one that shimmered thin and fragile, barely there.
It had to be that one.
I reached out slowly and took it.
It trembled in my grasp and I knew it was the one.
“Well done.” Magdalena grinned. “Now feel it. The thread you hold could be tied to of another’s soul. It could be the past, present or the unchosen outcome.”
I extended my fingers and let my magic brush against it. It flickered and I tried to drift away from me.
“Do not let it bend,” Magdalena warned gently. “Anchor it. Connect with the thread and align yourself.”
I drew in a breath and took my mind back to where we were days ago. I focused like I had then, tapping into the connection within me. Moments later I felt it and the thread steadied itself.
“Very good, Elariya,” Magdalena’s eyes sharpened. “Good. Now tap into it. Use the same connection you feel inside you and reveal the story it holds.”
We hadn’t done that before. And the command felt impossible. But that… what she was telling me to do was the key to anchoring myself to the threads of time.
I didn’t come here to fail or cower behind my nerves, so I was going to do it.
I thought for only a second before allowing my magic to glide along the thread. I felt the caress inside me. Another spark ignited a breath later and the cavern brightened.
It flashed like the uncertain flames of a candle in the wind then before us images flickered in the air, like echoes of memory.
There was a boy running through tall grass.
Laughter carried on wind.
Voices whispering through tall oak trees.
And a woman—a mage—with a beautiful gown. She walked toward the boy, but before she got to him the vision was gone and the thread I held faded in my hands.
The visions left the cavern and I wondered if I failed the task.
The astounded expressions on Magdalena and Arielle’s faces told me otherwise.
“Did I… do well?” I had to check.
“You did more than well my dear,” Magdalena replied. She glanced at Arielle before looking back at me. “That was the past. Quite a way back in the past.”
“But it faded.”
“No. That was all the information that thread could tell us. And you held the connection well.”
“Oh, brilliant. I was worried for a second.”
“Nothing to be worried about. You’re doing better than I expected. I would have been satisfied with a glimpse of the thread’s story. But you held it.” Magdalena glanced around the cavern, the gold light reflecting in her eyes. “Now let’s try something more challenging.”
Hope flared in my chest. “I’m ready.”
“Pick one of the larger strands. Any of them.”
I turned slowly, scanning the vast constellation above us. Near the cavern wall, one thread gleamed thicker than the others. It was longer and thicker. It pulsed not in flickers, but in steady waves.
I reached for it. The moment my magic brushed against it, the cavern hummed.
“Hold it steady and make the connection,” Magdalena instructed.
I tightened my focus. The strand resisted, vibrating in my hands. It was almost restless, like something that had been waiting too long to be touched.
But I made the connection and anchored myself in it.
The golden light thickened beneath my grip, the vibration slowing now, as if listening.
“This one is different, Elariya,” Magdalena said quietly. “Older. Stronger. Be careful. It may predate even this realm.”
“It feels… powerful,” Arielle whispered. “And I’m not even touching it.”
“It is powerful,” I breathed, feeling the waves of energy coil around my hands.
Magdalena nodded once. “To reveal its story, you must find its connections. Do not attempt to unravel it all at once. Time is layered. Peel it gently.”
Connections.
To my eyes it was one endless strand. But I understood. The longer the thread, the more intersections it carried. More lives. More moments. More fractures.
“I don’t know how to see them,” I admitted.
“Use your emotions,” Magdalena said softly. “Emotion binds body to soul. Soul binds memory to time. Think of what you want most. Let that desire anchor you, and the thread will answer.”
What did I want most?
Wolfe?
My memories?
Find my father?
Or—
Forward.
The thought tugged at my heart and I knew that was the answer.
I wanted to move forwards. To move beyond the resets. To live without fear of waking and forgetting those I loved. To build something that would not unravel.
I wanted my life back. Only then could I have everything else. Wolfe, my memories, and even Father is he was still alive.
The feeling did not burn.
It rooted and something in my chest aligned.
The cavern reacted and a low resonance rolled through the stone. The whispers sharpened, not chaotic but unified.
“Welcome, Daughter of the Hourglass,” It was a rush of voices. It could have been hundreds or even thousands of them. And we all heard them. Magdalena and Arielle paled, their gazes locked on me.
Daughter of the Hourglass. I’d written that term in my journal. The Seer had called me that. Hearing it now made me realize it must have meant something more.
Something sacred.
The threads around us began to swirl and spin. Then the voices folded around me.
Magdalena stiffened.
“What’s going on?” I hissed.
“Steady, girl,” Magdalena held up her hand. “Keep steady.”
I did, but the strand in my hand surged upward, slipping from my grip only to rise higher, suspended above the lake like a rising star.
“Ask what you will and it will be done,” the voices said.
“Show me you your story.” I gulping past the lump in my throat.
“As you wish.”
The thread turned. Its hidden intersections flared into view. And as it did, its hidden intersections flared into view.
A vast network burst outward from it and thousands of branching lines ignited in gold.
The cavern ceiling vanished. Darkness stretched above us, not stone but sky.
Mountains rose from shadow, ancient and jagged, their peaks crowned in snow. Winds howled across frozen ridges and constellations of stars burned bright.
Then the vision shifted.
Galaythia.
But not as I had known it.
Two moons hung in the heavens. One full and radiant. The other dimmer…fading.
In my journal I’d written about the moon that faded when the Veil was constructed. That was one of the first things I’d learned about the magical realm.
Now I was seeing it. In the past.
Time shifted and I watched as the weaker moon trembled, its silver light thinning, draining as though swallowed by something unseen.
This was an era. The thread was showing me not just a single life but the history of the land.
The golden thread pulsed and the vision of the fading moon fractured.
The mountains groaned.
The seas rose.
Magic shifted.
The fading moon fractured — not shattering, but dissolving into luminous dust that drifted across the sky like dying embers.
The vision trembled, threatening to branch into catastrophe.
And something inside me knew what to do.
“Hold.”
My voice did not shake.
The vision froze.
The final remnants of the fading moon suspended mid-fall.
“Hold still,” I commanded and the vision held. It froze, as the last remnants of fading moon began to drift away.
“Blessed Mother,” Magdalena muttered under her breath.
With the gentle stroke of my hand I waved it over the image and the vision folded inward, collapsing back into a single, radiant strand.
The thread descended slowly, returning to my outstretched hand, obedient now.
Then silence flooded the cavern.
Magdalena stared at me, her composure fractured in a way I had never seen before.
Arielle held her breath.
“That,” Magdalena said at last, voice reverent, “was history before history.”
When Arielle’s eyes met mine, we did not speak.
We didn’t need to.
We shared a look of silent understanding.
One that said, I was ready.
And we would not have to wait until Monday to do the spell.