Samantha stands alone in the hall, she looks to each of the Chosen, Tyron holding his sword in the air flames wrapped around his sword as he slices it through the air, flames frozen like ice. Freya throwing her arms forward with a swirl of flame wrapped around her wrists. The bullet coming out of Lazarus's rifle flying towards a Shoven holding his sword up charging in to the battle. Cid punching into the ground, marble cracking around his fists.

  Samantha counts the Chosen, “Wait, four?” Samantha looks around confused, looking for the missing member of the team.

  Suddenly from behind Samantha, “What did you do?”

  She slowly turns on her heels, the room was still apart from one figure moving towards her. “Zara?”

  Samantha walked over towards her, brushing her fingers through the air. The fragments drifted away lazily, as if trapped in water. The air pushed back, subtle but unyielding, as if time itself disapproved.

  “You can freeze time?” Zara breathed.

  “This is amazing!” Samantha says with a happy skip, running towards her.

  She skipped between the frozen figures, tapping one of the Shoven soldiers on the shoulder. Nothing. No reaction. No sound.

  Zara was walking through the hall, looking just as confused.

  Whatever held the others still didn’t recognise Zara as separate from Samantha.

  “Zara? How come you’re moving? Why aren’t you frozen?” Samantha circled her, eyes wide.

  “I don’t know,” Zara said with a shrug, scanning the motionless battlefield. “But how do we get it back to normal?”

  Samantha’s excitement faltered. Her lip trembled. “I don’t know… I just got these powers. What if I can’t fix it? What if time stays like this forever?” Tears welled in her eyes, spilling down her cheeks. She collapses down to her knees, thumping into the marble. Suddenly the excitement of freezing time wears off. The crushing responsibility taking over.

  Zara took a deep breath and knelt beside her. “Hey. Don’t worry. We’ll work it out, together.” She glanced around thoughtfully. Her voice was steady, but her hands weren’t. “What about the book? The weapons chose us, maybe they explain our powers?”

  Samantha’s eyes lit up. She grabbed Zara by the arm. “Yes! That’s brilliant, come on!”

  She sprinted down the frozen corridor running past Royal Guards frozen in action stances, Zara close behind. They reached the meeting room and Samantha tore her book from her bag, flipping through the pages in a frenzy.

  “This is useless!” she shouted, slamming her hands on the table. “It’s just history, nothing about my powers! What do we do, Zara?”

  She threw the book across the table in frustration.

  When she turned back, Zara’s skin had gone pale white. Her eyes glowed, pure white.

  “Zara?” Samantha whispered. She waved a hand in front of her friend’s face. “Zara, come on, talk to me!”

  No response.

  Samantha grabbed her arm. “Zara! Are you okay? Come back to me!”

  A moment later, the colour rushed back into Zara’s cheeks, and she gasped, collapsing to the floor. It felt like something had been torn through her, not shown to her.

  Samantha knelt beside her. “What happened?”

  Zara swallowed hard. “It was like… a vision. A dream. I saw us, all six of us, on the landing platform. The sky was full of Shoven ships. One of their massive vessels opened and sent out waves of fighters. We jumped into ships of our own to fight them, but one was shot down… it fell to the ground in flames.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Her breathing quickened.

  Samantha took her hand. “That’s my power, visions. You must have taken part of it. That’s why you can still move in frozen time. You’re the Catalyst.” Samantha suddenly understands what she looks like when she has her visions, and she did not like it.

  Zara blinked in realization. “So there are two of us now. Two Timekeepers.”

  No, Samantha realised, there was still only one TimeKeeper, just someone else who can fix her mistakes.

  “Exactly,” Samantha said. Determination burned in her eyes. “And two Timekeepers can find a solution.”

  They returned to the great hall. The silence was heavy, eerie, only their footsteps echoed between the towering pillars, every foot step repeated on each other, till it was just a solid sound of steps, almost humming. Samantha looked around, trying to remember what she had done to trigger the freeze.

  She drew one of her pistols and spun it around her finger. A faint blue glow shimmered from the barrel.

  Zara gasped. “What was that?”

  “The guns,” Samantha said softly. “When I spun them before, that’s when time froze.”

  “So spin them again! Maybe that’ll reverse it.”

  Samantha raised both pistols high. “Okay… let’s do this.”

  She began twisting the guns rapidly, the air around her pulsing with blue light. The glow grew brighter, humming with energy, but time didn’t move. Nothing changed.

  “What’s happening?” Zara’s voice cracked with panic. She dropped to her knees, tears forming. “We’re trapped…”

  Samantha sighed and lowered her weapons. She walked past Zara, leapt over one of the elder’s desks, and sat next to Lazarus’s unmoving form. Her voice was small. “What can we do? We’re supposed to save the world, and we can’t even save ourselves.”

  Zara looked up at her from the floor. “We’re The Chosen, right? People are relying on us.”

  Samantha froze. “Wait… Zara, shut up, sorry, I have an idea!”

  She jumped down and sprinted from the room, her boots echoing on the stone. Zara hurried after her, finding Samantha rifling through her bag in the Hall of the Chosen.

  “What are you looking for?” Zara asked.

  “The necklace, the one I was given the day I discovered my powers!” Samantha’s voice was frantic. “It amplifies them, it let me teleport before. Maybe I can use it to move through time.”

  She pauses for a second, every instinct warned her that time remembered being broken.

  Zara frowned. “Samantha, we can’t just run away from this.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” Samantha’s tone hardened. “If I can move us five minutes back, before everything froze, we can change it. We can stop it.”

  She pulled the amulet from her bag and fastened it around her neck. The metal burned cold against her skin, as if reluctant. Zara caught her arm.

  “But you’ve never done that before. What if you overshoot? What if you go back centuries?” Zara looks at her concerned. “Time isn't something we should just mess around with is it?”

  Samantha met her eyes. “No of course not, we have to try though. We haven’t found another way. We’re The Chosen, we take the risks others can’t.”

  Zara exhaled shakily, then nodded. “Alright. Let’s do it, if you believe this will work.”

  They clasped hands. The moment Zara’s fingers closed around hers, the chaos steadied. Samantha closed her eyes. The world around them began to blur, colours melting together, light twisting like liquid glass. With a deafening rush, they were yanked backward through time.

  When they opened their eyes, the hall was whole again.

  Something was different, subtle, wrong, though she couldn’t yet name it. It wasn't something visible, but Samantha had this feeling in her gut, that something, was not where it was supposed to be, was it her or Zara.

  Zara sat on the floor, dazed, Samantha turned toward the doorway, to join the others but Tyron was stood there, alive, sword at his side, looking slightly bewildered.

  “Samantha, I thought you had gone already?” he said hesitantly.

  “Yea, just had to collect something.” She winks at Zara as she leaves.

  Tyron looks around the table to see Zara still sat on the floor “Are you with us?”

  Zara smiled, rising to her feet. “Yes, sir. Let’s go.”

  Tyron nodded, pulling the heavy doors shut behind them.

  They entered the grand marble hall, towering pillars, banners torn and scorched. At the far end stood a row of great thrones, the largest in the center gleaming with golden filigree. The room was empty now. Not a place for meetings anymore.

  An endless chamber of marble pillars and golden trim. Shafts of light filtered through tall windows, cutting through the dust in soft, divine beams. The massive desks of the High Council stood empty, silent witnesses to the coming storm. Banners hang from the ceiling, bright red, stitched on it symbols of a planet with cracks through it. At the end of the hall is a large glass window positioned for the sun setting opposite, as a sign to the gods of Shahero, to remind them of the new day approaching. The sun burns through it brightly, sending a warm glow through the room.

  This was a room for war.

  Thanks for reading!

  Every time someone spends a few minutes in the world of Shahero, it honestly means more than I can properly put into words. Seeing people follow the journey of Tyron, Samantha, Lazarus, Freya, Cid, and Zara makes all the hours of writing worth it.

  If you enjoyed the chapter, feel free to leave a comment or follow the story. I read every comment, and it genuinely helps the story reach more readers here on Royal Road.

  A few people have also asked how they can support the project as I work toward eventually publishing the book. If that’s something you’d like to help with, there’s a support link below that goes toward editing and preparing the story for print.

  No pressure at all though—reading the story is already huge support.

  Question for readers:What moment in this chapter stood out to you the most?

  See you in the next chapter.

  — Matthew Cooke-Sumner