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It had been two hundred years since the empire fell. It had been nine hundred years. It had been millennia. When time was merely another set of directions to travel along, these things quickly became mutable. When they had first come into being, two fragments of a shattered soul set to guide those who came after, it had seemed linear; by now, that illusion had faded.
They were all-powerful, yet utterly powerless. Taking their half-shared consciousness to anywhere and anywhen was a matter of less than a thought, yet they were bound to this place outside time, unable to do more than observe. They were charged with ensuring a certain course of events, yet compelled not to interfere directly. They only had one tool with which to guide history: the books.
It was simple enough- a lesser version of their own powers and restrictions, for those bound as much to the mortal plane as they were to their own. And, just as it allowed a Chronicle's wielder to enter their world, it gave them a means to alter the course of the other.
With the limited abilities granted by the Chronicles, much of history was fixed. Still, each little change fanned out a different version of history, one that could be anywhere from nigh-identical to those that had gone before to a wildly different path. And as those timelines proliferated, they were permitted to simplify them, combining events and influences from a thousand related histories to form one where their goals were achieved.
It was a powerful tool, but one with its own limits and frustrations. Their options were chosen by the wielders of the Chronicles, and so they were helpless when those wielders didn't provide possible futures where events transpired correctly. All they could do if that happened was talk to them on their way through Historia, replaying conversations with modifications to tone and wording until something changed in the wielder's behavior. And sometimes bits of the timeline would take on a life of their own, resonating and echoing wherever and whenever the person who instigated them went. Vague impressions nearly always leaked through unless they made a specific effort to prevent it.
Yet none of it had been a problem until Heinrich came along.
Lippti said, once, as they watched yet another history unfold where he fled the castle, never to return, that they had perhaps been lucky that this was the first time a Sacrifice had actively and explicitly rejected their duty. They had been watching for long enough to be able to chronicle the shift in the royal family's appearance from the dark hair and pointed ears of the Imperials to pale blondes who could pass unremarked among the populace; in all that time, while some had been reluctant, they had always come around in the end, accepting that their own lives were not worth the destruction of a continent. Heinrich, however, had stood fast, each iteration of the timeline making him more and more entrenched in his decision instead of less.
But that, they had thought, was just a particularly tricky part of the dizzyingly complex game they played. They had conferred together in a remote corner of history, then slipped back in time to see what they could do.
It had been difficult- Victor had never paid much attention to their counsel and he gave them little to work with. In the end, they'd had to go back further yet, influencing the brothers through their predecessors, shaping their childhoods ever so slightly. But in the end, they had managed it: they had given the duke someone to care about.
After their millennia of watching the twists and turns of history, amazement was not an emotion they had much capacity for. But it was not far from what they felt as they watched the consequences of their alterations to the past unfold. They had given little thought to what a change in his uncle's attitude would do to the king's lonely, frustrated son. They certainly hadn't expected it would turn him into someone great.
Prince Ernst had originally seemed unremarkable- intelligent, but undriven, kept too tight under his father's thumb to develop any passions of his own. But given an ally in his uncle, the prince had broken free, his idealism, energy, and quiet charisma turning him into his father's fiercest opponent. They had initially been pleased; a good ruler usually made for a good caster, one who could make the most of a sibling's sacrifice even as they grieved. But it had changed to a deep sadness that was as close as they could still come to horror when the king had lashed out in rage, fear, and jealousy, punishing his son's disobedience with death.
The paths of history had splintered wildly when news of Ersnt's capture reached Heinrich. Timelines split off where all went according to Victor's plan, and Ernst died bitter and angry, thinking mostly of his hatred for his father. The ritual failed, then, and the world was swallowed by sand; Heinrich made no effort to prevent its destruction, saying that the loss of the world was only a fitting punishment for what had happened. But there were other possibilities, ones where Heinrich's sheer dogged spite drove him to take a more active role.
Despite numerous efforts, they had never been able to find a version of the past where the duke didn't flee the palace. And so now, when news reached his far-off location, there was no timeline where he returned in time to prevent his nephew's death. When they'd told him as much, he'd replied, snarling, that they were lying and he knew it. They had watched with impassive patience as he came to realize they were not.
They had not known what they expected his reaction to be, but it had still surprised them when it came. Teo had taken it as a sign that they should start over again, but Lippti had counselled patience; she still felt there was potential in this history. And, she said, even if they couldn't save this timeline, they could still learn more about Heinrich- or, as he was calling himself now, Heiss- that might help them discover a way to convince him to do his duty.
They watched the prince disappear, murdered by his uncle's well-meaning hands far more thoroughly than his father's gun had managed. They watched as Heiss traversed back and forth through history, honing the young man into a weapon against them- or trying to. Ernst (or rather, Stocke- he wasn't really Ernst anymore) proved to be as stubbornly resistant to cynicism as ever, though he grew quieter and more withdrawn as time passed. They watched Heiss go through dozens of permutations of history, raging each time a dangerous mission ended with his nephew giving up his life to protect others. And they watched as he tried, again and again, to get the young man on his side. Even without their interference, he always failed.
That was when he made his big mistake: he gave him the White Chronicle.
A weapon could be held by any hand. And they had already known Stocke far longer than Heiss had ever known Ernst.
It had been almost trivial to get him on their side; Heiss had done half the work for them. With a dozen abandoned timelines' worth of betrayal echoing in his subconscious, Stocke trusted Heiss about as much as he did a rattlesnake. He didn't trust them much either, at first. They had attempted honesty several times, but the responses had varied from flat disbelief to anger to confusion, and it had always influenced his actions too much, and in the wrong ways. And so they were forced by the laws that bound them into incompleteness and dishonesty. He knew they were lying by omission. But he had, it seemed, recognized the sincerity of their stated goal- he stuck by them and, in a way, became their champion.
His goals and actions created a far more fruitful span of histories than those instigated by the Black Chronicle. However, what they could do with those was still a balancing act. They'd stumbled quite early on upon a version of history where Stocke had assassinated Queen Protea but been captured by guards afterward, which ultimately led to him giving up his soul to protect the world. It would have been an acceptable outcome, if far from what they would have preferred. The moment Heiss had heard about it, he'd rewound the timeline, stopping it in its tracks and doing everything in his power to prevent it from coming to pass. They'd quickly realized that there were, then, only two ways the world could be saved: Heiss must be convinced to do his duty, or else rendered unable to prevent Stocke from doing his.
Either possibility was daunting; the Black Chronicle's limits and safeguards were falling away at an alarming rate before the force of its wielder's anger, his actions becoming less constrained by the main timeline and his power growing far beyond what it should be. But it had to be done, or the world would perish. And they had the entire infinite plane of time to work with.
They had to make sure Heiss always thought he could win. More than once, they had apologized to Stocke for everything he was about to go through or had just been through, all because they had let some machination of Heiss's go off without a hitch. He seemed to believe it was just polite sympathy that made them say, "I'm sorry." It wasn't.
It was a tricky line they walked, keeping their manipulations out of Heiss's view, dancing around the edges of untenable futures. Sometimes their goals aligned enough that they could use him in their favor- he wanted his nephew alive as much, more than they did, and whenever he got himself killed Heiss would always drop everything to undo it. Perhaps in his mind it was a form of atonement for failing to save Ernst. Thus, the greatest difficulty, they found, was in locating a timeline where Stocke's companions survived. And, most especially, Eruca.
They had watched sadly each time he was reunited with his sister, the shock on his face growing more obvious with each version of history as more and more tiny fragments of phantom memory collected. She, by contrast, grew more composed, more steeled against her brother's return. In one early timeline, she had rushed over and hugged him as soon as she saw him, crying against his chest even as he drew away in astonishment and confusion, but now, you had to look closely to see the anguish in her eyes each time she realized how little he remembered. However, they had yet to find a single history where she didn't cry herself to sleep the night after she met him.
They had to be careful how much information he got- he always figured it out eventually, but if he learned too early, it resulted in a future that Heiss would not allow to continue. Eruca often triggered it, asking probing questions in the desperate hope that she could jog his memory, neither understanding nor accepting that Ernst was gone. It didn't- couldn't- have the desired effect, but his uncle had trained him well- he read between the lines of what she asked him, learning more from her questions than she did from his answers. The words, "You think I'm your brother, don't you?" had ushered in the death of more than one timeline.
Aht had been a lucky find in that respect; they'd found the Satyros in Gran Plain in one of Heiss's timelines, and experimentally allowed the incident to spread. The little shaman had been instantly fascinated by the quiet young man whose soul was not his own; the attacking tigers, accidentally spread from yet another history, had led to a rescue that turned that fascination into devotion. And so they had appeared before her in a quiet offshoot of history and explained what they wanted. She'd listened quietly, then said, "So if I stop him from finding out, he won't have to die?"
"Not necessarily," said Lippti.
"But he definitely will if you don't," said Teo.
She'd agreed, and they had allowed her resolution to spread. Eruca's frustration in each affected timeline was palpable, but it was necessary; in the revised futures, Heiss was far less likely to abandon the history as a dead end.
As they'd watched and waited, they studied the red knight who had once almost been a king. The man they were leading to a second death.
He made mistakes- what Chronicle wielder didn't? Sensible choices derailed by bad luck, poorly-thought-out decisions made in the heat of a moment- they were remarkable only in how focused, how well-intentioned they all were. More than a few of those gifted with the books had used them to abandon their responsibilities or fall into decadence with no consequences, and none had resisted the temptation entirely; he was only the third in history to only slip up once. When he'd returned afterward, his expression had dared them to say anything, and while there had been a note of disapproval in Teo's voice, neither had truly reproached him. Running off to settle down with a lover was one of the more restrained acts of indulgence they had seen. And even then, he seemed unable to entirely abandon the world; though he had to have known the timeline was doomed, he'd spent much of his time trying to aid and protect the people around him, even when they would never know.
At some point, he'd figured out that the Chronicle would only allow decisions where he had a chance to survive and learn from his mistakes, and after that he'd gotten a bit reckless. But always, when they asked him why he'd done it, he'd calmly offer an explanation, questions he'd hoped to learn the answers to, something he'd hoped to gain. And then, just as calmly, he would return to correct it, doing what he'd known he needed to to keep history in line. They knew he felt guilt for everything he had done and failed to do, but he kept it sealed tight in the back of his mind, far from his thoughts.
They'd seen him at his weakest, those moments of lonely, angry grief when they could tell he would have torn pages from the book if he could. But the paper in the Chronicles wasn't really paper, and was impervious to everything from blades to fire. And always, before long, he'd let the tension drain out of him, smoothing out the page with its faintly glowing golden lettering and closing the book. Then he would turn and walk back to the others, just as relaxed and impassive as usual. He never complained, and the small smile that the prince had once been known for came just as easily as ever, looking entirely genuine. Even to them, with millennia of experience behind them and an easy view of his entire life, he was often completely inscrutable: patient, silent, and indefatigably determined.
Heiss never realized what he had created. He looked at the red-clad, deadly swordsman and saw Prince Ernst, helpless and bleeding on the floor of the Royal Hall. Even Eruca eventually grew to understand that her brother was something more than dead, now, his soul passed on and every memory that made him who he was rubbed out with surgical precision, but to the wielder of a Chronicle, death was never truly final. When he could go back and talk to the young prince whenever he wanted, Heiss had no need to come to terms with the fact that the person with Ernst's face and voice now was not the same one who had looked up to Duke Heinrich as a substitute for his unloving father. He was, at best, Ernst as he might have been, in another world.
Seeing what Stocke had done with only the choices available to a soldier, Teo had wondered aloud, once, how much more he could have done with the opportunities granted to a prince. Lippti had replied that it would probably have been less; the freedom with which he could move had given them chances the like of which they hadn't seen in generations.
They had watched him die a hundred hundred times, willing and unwilling, knowing and unknowing, at a thousand different hands, blades, claws, or fangs. And yet this time, seeing him facing death with an easy, calm acceptance that what he did was necessary, they felt far more grief than they ever had before. Perhaps it was the way he spoke to his uncle, compassionate, understanding, and entirely without rancor, even when the older man all but begged Stocke to hate him. His kindness was almost cruelty in itself.
He seemed to be the only one without regrets when the talons of the spell reached for him, which, illogically, saddened them further. Slipping through time, they had consoled themselves that while their gamble might have failed, they had still found a history where the world was preserved. Then they returned to bear witness to his death- he had done enough to aid them that the least they owed him was a vigil.
They had thought Heiss was neutralized. The vast majority of his stolen power had been expended when he pulled the fabric of Historia around him into a shell of ancient, echoing pain and rage that shattered before his nephew's sword and the searing light of his niece's magic. The backlash had broken his connection to the Black Chronicle, leaving him trapped and, they thought, helpless.
They could not truly forget anything, but it had been some time since either of them had considered the fact that Heiss had once wielded the White Chronicle, though he had abandoned it for the Black. So they had both been surprised when he reached out through it, knocking the spell off course from its intended target. Surprised, but not worried- the spell guided itself, and delay here, outside the normal flow of time, meant nothing to the outside world. But when they'd realized what he truly intended, it had changed to a far more complex mix of emotions- surprise intensified, joined by apprehension, hope, even a hint of triumph.
And so they did what they did best- they watched, and said just the right words at just the right time, making one last, crucial move. "Stop this, Heiss."
Perhaps he would have seen through it at another time, realizing they were turning his hatred of them to their own ends. Perhaps he did realize, and simply didn't care.
He was smiling as he vanished, his nephew reaching out in vain towards him, desperately trying to stop him long enough to ask, "Why?"
They knew Stocke well enough by now to realize their offer would be rejected. But still, they felt they owed it to him, their knight, their King of Swords who could never be king. They'd offered him immortality, and the right to play the game instead of being one of the pieces. He'd turned it down out of hand, of course- he never had been able to sit still when he had the opportunity not to. Even- especially- if the reward for doing so was his life, his soul, and his continued existence.
There was a strange sense of finality as they watched him go. He would be back, of course- the Chronicle was always as long as it needed to be, and a chapter that had been final could easily become nothing more than the starting place for another part of its wielder's life. It wouldn't be like him to let that power go to waste; there was still too much he could do with it. And they would be able to watch the unfolding of his life, whatever he chose to do with it.
But it still felt like a goodbye when he stepped through the gathering white light back into the real world. As though he was leaving them alone to begin a new game of solitaire.