The "Eternal Clock" in the center of the Stillwater Palace did not tick. It hummed. A low, vibrating sound that resonated through the stone floors, reminding every inhabitant that in the kingdom of Aethelgard, time was a luxury they had in abundance.
Zaryan stood on the balcony, his chin resting on his palm. Below him, a fountain played in the courtyard. To a stranger, the water would look like a shimmering, solid sculpture. To Zaryan, it was just... slow. He watched a single droplet lose its grip on the marble lip of the fountain. He counted to sixty before the drop finally met the pool below.
Drip.
"Prince Zaryan," a voice boomed behind him, dragging through the air like a heavy rug.
Zaryan didn't turn immediately. He took his time. He was eighteen, yet he felt like he had been eighteen for a century. He turned to see Kavok, his mentor, whose every step was a calculated, tectonic shift.
"The King expects you for the Lesson of Centuries," Kavok said. "You have been staring at the border forests for three hours."
"It felt like three minutes," Zaryan whispered.
"Time is a gift, my Prince. Do not squander it on the horizon."
But Zaryan was suffocating. In this realm, a conversation could last an entire afternoon. A meal was a four-hour ritual. Even the wind moved with a lethargic grace. He needed something—anything—that moved faster than his own heartbeat.
That evening, Zaryan did something forbidden. He slipped past the Sentinels—who moved so slowly that sneaking past them was like walking past statues—and entered the Twilight Border.
The atmosphere changed instantly. The air felt thinner, buzzing with a strange electricity. The Border was the only place where the "Heavy Time" of his home met the "Wild Time" of the Gale Realm.
Zaryan sat on a fallen log, his silver-threaded cloak pooling around him. He closed his eyes, listening to the silence.
Whoosh.
A gust of wind? No. It was too sharp. Too focused.
Zaryan opened his eyes. For a split second, he saw a blur of orange and teal—a streak of color that defied the laws of his world. It was gone before he could even blink.
Whoosh.
There it was again. Coming from the South.
Zaryan stood up, his heart racing—the only thing in this forest moving at a "normal" speed. "Who's there?" he called out. To his ears, his voice sounded normal. To anyone else in the forest, he sounded like a deep, rumbling mountain.
Suddenly, the blur stopped.
Ten feet away from him stood a girl. She looked about thirteen. Her hair was a wild mess of dark curls, tied back with glowing glass beads that rattled with a frantic energy. She was breathing so fast her chest looked like a vibrating drum.
To Zaryan, she looked like a hummingbird trapped in a human body.
The girl stared at him, her eyes wide with curiosity and fear. She tilted her head, then moved—so fast that Zaryan's eyes struggled to track her—and was suddenly three inches from his face.
She poked his cheek.
"Are... you... a... statue?" she asked.
Her words came out like a rapid-fire machine gun. To Zaryan, it sounded like: "Areyouastatue?"
Zaryan blinked. By the time his eyelids opened, the girl had already walked around him twice, inspected his boots, and was now tugging at his silver cloak.
"I... am... not... a... statue," Zaryan replied, trying to speak as fast as he could.
The girl giggled. It was a high, tinkling sound, like a thousand bells ringing at once. "You speak so funny! Like the ground is talking. I'm Lyra. I've been watching you sit on that log for ages! Well, it felt like ages. I went and had lunch, climbed three trees, caught a lizard, and came back—and you were still just... sitting there."
Zaryan stared at her in awe. He had been sitting there for perhaps five minutes.
"I am Zaryan," he said, reaching out a hand to introduce himself.
Lyra looked at his hand. She waited. She tapped her foot. She looked at the sky. She looked back at his hand, which was only halfway toward her.
"Wow," she whispered, her eyes sparkling with wonder. "You're really, really slow. Do you want to see how fast I can run?"
Before Zaryan could say 'Yes,' she vanished. A trail of laughter echoed through the trees, circling him like a whirlwind.
Zaryan stood in the center of the clearing, a slow smile spreading across his face. For the first time in his eighteen years, the world didn't feel heavy. It felt alive.
He didn't know that while he spent the next hour playing with this "spirit of the wind," a week of her life would vanish into the breeze.
He only knew that he never wanted to go back to the palace again.