I ate lunch at a speed that probably concerned my mother.

"You'll get a stomach ache," Svenna said.

"I'm fine," I said, and ate faster.

The moment I finished I was back down the stairs.

The basement settled around me, familiar and quiet, the candles throwing their steady light across the stone walls and the cushions and the encyclopedia sitting where I'd left it on the floor.

I stood in the center of the room.

Took one short breath.

Closed my eyes.

I found it immediately this time. No searching, no reaching into the dark hoping to find something. It was right there, sitting just below the surface, waiting with the patience of something that had always been there and had simply needed to be named.

I pictured myself outside myself. The soul untethering, the way the book described it. Not metaphor. Actual separation, the essential thing stepping slightly free of the body that housed it.

"Kronos."

The world stopped.

Every candle flame arrested mid-flicker. The faint sound of the house above me, footsteps and the settling of timber and the distant river, all of it cut out simultaneously like someone had lifted a needle from a record. The dust hanging in the air above the bookshelves hung there, suspended, going nowhere.

The figure rose behind me and above me, its vast presence filling the low space without quite touching the walls, the aperture where its face should have been opening onto that impossible depth. Its hand descended into mine.

Three seconds.

Then the world resumed.

Kronos folded back in, the candles moved again, the river returned, and I was standing in the quiet basement with my hand slightly raised and my heart going considerably faster than normal.

I stared at the far wall.

Then I made a sound that was not dignified. A shout, actually, loud enough to bounce off the stone walls and probably travel up through the floorboards, the specific unrestrained shout of someone who has been working toward something for a very long time and has finally, unambiguously arrived at it.

I threw both fists up.

I paced a circle on the stone floor, still making noise, the kind of noise that would have been embarrassing in front of anyone and was completely acceptable alone in a basement.

I did it. After months of the same passage, the same frustrating almost, the same wall between intention and result. I had a name and a response and a real manifestation that froze the world for three seconds and it was mine. Actually mine.

Footsteps on the stairs.

Reesay appeared at the bottom with a small plate in her hand, expression slightly cautious in the way of someone who had heard an alarming sound and come to assess it.

"You forgot your dessert, young master."

I straightened up immediately. Cleared my throat. Attempted to look like someone who had been conducting quiet academic research and had not just been running in circles shouting.

"Oh. I'll be up in a second."

She looked at me. At my expression specifically, which I apparently wasn't controlling as well as I thought.

"You seem quite happy. Did something work out?"

I looked at her.

The smile came before I could moderate it. Wide, genuine, the kind that didn't leave room for the composed version.

"Kronos," I said.

The world stopped.

Candles frozen. Sound gone. Everything arrested in its moment.

I moved.

Three seconds wasn't long but I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them. I crossed the space between us in four quick steps, ducked around behind Reesay. 

I fell on her.

Hugged her, on her bum.

It was slightly bigger than her chest, but wasn't as soft as her front breasts, but it was confortable.

I placed my arms around her.

I was too short to reach her chest, oh well.

I placed them around her waist, right at her private area.

I hugged her tight.

I wasn't controlling myself.

The world resumed, although I would've prefered it stayed frozen like that for a bit longer.

Reesay blinked and let out a soft cry like moan. Looked at where I had been standing.

Nothing there.

She turned around feeling my touch.

I let go and stepped back.

Reesay kneeled down. Pinched my cheek, the one I could still feel burning from the exertion, already flushed hot.

I knew what was coming. The gentle scolding.

She stopped mid-breath.

Her eyes were locked on mine.

She looked at me like I was a ghost.

I was still smiling.

"How did you—" She started.

"I did it," I said.

"No way."

I stepped back. Opened my hand. Didn't speak this time—just let it happen the way it wanted to. The untethering, the reaching, the naming that didn't need words.

Kronos rose behind me.

Reesay's breath caught.

The figure was vast in the low basement space, assembled from something between solid and light, clockwork dissolving into fractals at its edges. Gears turned inside it with a sound like ticking, like the patient counting of every moment that had ever passed. Where its face should have been was an aperture, an opening that looked through to somewhere else, somewhere larger, a keyhole into an impossible room. Its hand descended. Merged with mine.

"There's no way," Reesay whispered.

"I did it," I said. "And it's because of you."

She didn't move. Didn't blink. The dessert plate had lowered to her lap.

"You awakened your Eidolon," she said slowly. Not a question. A statement she was trying to fit into the shape of reality.

"Yep."

"At seven years old."

"Mm-hmm."

"That's—" She stopped. Shook her head. "That's impossible."

I shook my head back. Disagreed silently.

The memory surfaced unbidden. The white void. The woman's arms around me, her voice dropping into something almost reverential.

"Someone once told me," I said, "that impossibility is just a wall we build in our own minds. A boundary we accept without questioning whether it was ever really there." I paused. "She said the world rewards those who walk through it."

Reesay stared at me. Not at Kronos. At me.

"Who told you that?" she asked quietly.

I didn't answer. Couldn't answer. The memory slipped away like water.

Kronos folded back in. The basement exhaled. The ticking faded.

Reesay was still looking at me like she was seeing someone she didn't recognize.

"What in god's name?"

Aldric's voice cut down the staircase like a blade. He stood at the top with Svenna, framed by the light from the kitchen behind them. His expression was the one he got when a merchant's scales didn't balance, when something didn't add up. There was confusion there, and underneath it, something closer to concern.

Svenna's hand moved to her mouth. She was already shaking her head slightly, like she was trying to reject what she was seeing before she even understood it.

"Sweethard, what is that?" she asked, troubled. There was a tremor in her voice, the kind that meant she was afraid but trying not to show it. The voice of a mother who suddenly doesn't recognize her own child.

"This is my Eidolon," I said. The words came out clear. Proud. I meant every syllable. "Kronos. My very own."

Svenna's hand pressed harder against her lips. I'd expected that reaction. Predicted it. Filed it away like one more data point in a calculation I'd been running for weeks. But seeing it happen was different from imagining it would happen.

"Reesay," Aldric said carefully, descending one step. Then another. His tone was the measured one he used when he was trying to understand something that had caught him off guard. "Was this your doing?"

"Oh no, it was all young mast—" Reesay started, her voice steady despite the shock still visible in her eyes.

"She helped me," I cut in. The words came fast because I needed them to understand this part. Needed them to know. "Reesay taught me to read the book. Every symbol, every passage. She answered every question I had, night after night, lantern lit, while the house slept. Without her, I wouldn't have found the name, wouldn't have known how to reach for it or how to untether. This was her work as much as mine. More than mine, maybe."

The basement seemed to contract around us. The candlelight suddenly felt very close, very warm. I could smell the wax, the stone, the faint dust that never quite settled in the corners.

Reesay looked at me like she was trying to solve something. Like I was a puzzle that had just revealed a new side. Don't look at me like that. Everything I said came from exactly where it needed to come from. She knew that. She had to know that.

Her expression softened at the edges.

"Young master..." she said softly, and there was something in those three words that made me pause. Not disapproval. Something closer to wonder.

"I'm going to master Kronos," I continued, and it felt important to say it aloud, to make it real by speaking it. "And one day, I'm going to build a kingdom. A real one."

I smiled at Reesay. She smiled back, and for a moment the professional composure, the careful distance she kept, fell away completely. For just that moment, she was looking at me like I was something she'd helped create. Something that mattered.

Aldric opened his mouth. Closed it again. He was still on the stairs, suspended between coming down and staying where he was, caught between the father he was and the shock of what his son had become.

Svenna made a sound that wasn't quite a word. It might have been a gasp. It might have been a prayer.

Then she came down the stairs.

Not walking. Rushing, the quick urgent steps of someone who had made a decision and was acting on it before she could change her mind. She dropped to her knees and pulled me against her, and the moment her arms closed around me the whole basement shifted. Not physically. But something in the air changed, some tension I didn't even know was there released all at once.

She cried. Quiet at first, shoulders shaking, then harder. The kind of crying that doesn't have words, that exists beneath language. I could feel her tears soaking into my hair, hot and real.

"You're growing up too fast," she said into my hair, and her voice was thick with it. "I can feel it happening and I can't stop it. Every day you're becoming something I don't quite recognize. You're not like us anymore. Not like me or your father. You're always right about things. You're always certain about what you're doing. And now you've awakened something we can't even understand, at an age that nobody in either of our families has ever managed."

She pulled back just slightly, enough to look at my face. Her eyes were red, her cheeks streaked.

"I'm afraid you don't need us anymore."

The basement went very still. The candles seemed to flicker slower, as if they were listening.

I hadn't thought about that. I'd been so focused on the untethering, the training, the kingdom that was supposed to exist somewhere ahead of me that I hadn't looked at the cost of it. Hadn't looked at her face, the worry lines that had probably gotten deeper while I was in the basement, book in hand, chasing something she couldn't touch.

I hugged her back, pressing my small face against her shoulder.

"I'm doing this for you," I said. "Both of you. Everything I'm doing, it's all for this."

She pulled back. Looked at me with red, searching eyes, trying to find the child she'd raised in the seven-year-old who was suddenly speaking like someone else.

"I know you work every day to afford this house. To keep us fed. I know how hard it is." The words came from somewhere older than seven, from a different life, a different version of me that had learned this lesson too late. "I want to change that. I want you to live without struggling. I want to give you everything you gave me, and more. I want to repay you for every moment you spent making sure I had what I needed."

This was true. All of it was true. In another life, I'd watched my parents work themselves thin. I'd taken it for granted until I couldn't anymore. Until it was too late to thank them, too late to do anything but regret. I wasn't making that mistake again. Not here. Not with them.

Svenna's tears came faster, harder. She pulled me close again, holding me against her like she might lose me if she let go. And Aldric came down the stairs then, his movements deliberate, his face working through something. He knelt beside us both and wrapped his arms around both of us, and he was crying too, silent tears that caught the candlelight. It felt strange because they weren't my real parents but they were holding me like they were, like they'd been holding me all along and I'd only just now understood it. Like I'd finally arrived somewhere I was supposed to be.

The basement was quiet except for their breathing, our breathing, the faint ticking of Kronos that wasn't even there anymore but seemed to echo anyway.

I felt something wet on my cheek. A tear. My own.

I guess I was growing up too fast.

But maybe that was the point. Maybe some things couldn't be done any other way.