Page 48 of Revert (The Royal Chronicles #4)

T ime was a force I had always believed to be beyond control—seconds, minutes, hours…days bleeding into weeks, months into years—all marching unyieldingly onward. No slowing or stopping it, only surviving within its current.

But within the Chamber of Timelines lay possibilities I never would have imagined.

Here time did not march—it listened, waited.

Potential lay within that stillness, a quiet, surging power of possibility I had never known in any life I’d lived.

The sense that I might no longer be a victim to time’s whims, but at last seize control and use it to finally reclaim what had been taken.

My and Castiel’s shared determination to trap the unworthy master who had twisted time for his own self-serving ends acted as an unseen key.

The chamber shifted as magic stirred—not a spell I could see or hear, but a force that moved between the spaces, threading through the very air. A ancient safeguard.

The light dimmed, the pulse of the hourglass slowing as if time itself were holding its breath as we quietly moved towards it.

I was dimly aware of the room with my memories and the mural fading behind us as we left it, disappearing once more into the nebulous mesh of time now that it had served its purpose.

I extended my thoughts towards the presence I could feel just beyond reach, the architect of it all who had first set me on this path.

As if the hourglass standing majestically in the center of the chamber had been awaiting instructions, the enchantment pulsed, like a second heartbeat beneath my own.

The runes along the walls faded into darkness, and in their place, a light shimmered outward, like a ripple across water.

Another memory rose into view—not a flicker of my own past like the others, but one that didn’t feel as if it belonged to me.

It came alive before me—not as a projection, but as a presence—unfolding like a performance conjured by the magic of the chamber itself.

It rose like smoke, clear and impossibly ancient: a woman stood alone on a windswept plateau, her arms outstretched, her silhouette haloed in light.

Spirals of magic twisted around her, threads of gold and ash unraveling from her fingers, weaving through the sky like living strands.

Even without explanation, I knew instinctively she was commanding time.

Not with tools or incantations, but with will alone.

The ethereal glow illuminated her features as she turned slightly towards me.

My breath caught. The resemblance was undeniable, confirming her as my ancestor whose blood—and the power it carried—ran in my veins.

At her throat shimmered a familiar sigil, etched in silver, that I now wore around my own neck—the same spiral pattern carved into the pedestal at the center of the chamber, the same symbol I had captured glimpses of throughout my sojourn at the Thorndale court without understanding its meaning.

I stepped forward, my gaze tracing her regal features—older, marked by a weight that time could not erase, but her eyes were identical to mine. My fingertips tingled, as though aching to feel the magic that was my legacy flowing through them.

Castiel’s reverent voice came from beside me. “I recognize her from her portrait in the royal archives. She was one of the original wielders who helped create the hourglass, whose bloodline bound time to the crown.”

I watched, transfixed, as time itself curved at her command.

The threads surrounding her brightened, then bent.

She shaped it not like magic, but like memory—molding it with the ease of a master potter, folding centuries with a turn of her wrist. A power that unfolded not by spellwork, but by birthright.

As I watched her, she turned, her gaze seeming to land directly on mine.

Deliberately, she extended her hands towards me, a coil of silver threads—woven from time and magic—resting in her outstretched palms. With precise, fluid motions, she unwound them, isolating one frayed strand.

From a fine gold chain around her neck, she drew a pair of tiny golden scissors and snipped the thread.

It fluttered from her fingers, carried away on a breath of wind.

She held my gaze for a long, steady moment before a faint smile touched her lips. Once more, she stepped closer and reached out until her finger grazed the space just above my heart.

At the gentle touch, the vision faded like mist at dawn, but its presence lingered, the thread of her bloodline humming in my veins. The enchantment that laced the chamber didn’t settle, but stirred again, building steadily like a thousand invisible threads tightening around me.

With a gasp, I stumbled back a step. Heat surged through my palm, potent rather than painful, like standing too close to an open flame…not enough to burn, but enough to ignite.

“Bernice?” Castiel’s voice shifted, uncertainty overtaken by fierce concern. He reached for me, but hesitated, his hand frozen midair as the space between us shimmered with something new.

Light spilled from the pedestal bearing the hourglass artifact. The glyphs carved into the walls sparkled in answer, rearranging in the same spiral pattern etched into my pendant, as if the power bound to it had been patiently awaiting this moment.

The warm threads of light that had once danced through the hourglass rippled outward like a living echo towards me—recognizing something I hadn’t yet claimed. The glow enveloped me, moonlight spun into motion. With it came a surge of memory—not just my own, but ancestral.

Magic curled through me, strange and familiar all at once—not borrowed or taught, but an extension of myself I had never known I was missing, yet recognized with impossible clarity.

Once again, it was as though pieces shifted into place, but this time instead of images on a wall it was dormant knowledge within me.

I recalled the vision of the woman bending time to her will, and this time it was as though I was that mage—my hands somehow knew how to shift and manipulate the threads lighting the chamber, how to knot and loop a moment so it could be lived again.

I dropped to my knees, vision swimming—not from pain, but from something vast and ancient opening inside me. A well of knowing, as if the lines between past and present were slipping away, and I was standing in all my lives at once.

The same delicate threads I’d seen in the vision appeared all around me, shifting in shimmering trails across the chamber like golden spider-silk.

They glistened in every direction, winding through the chamber like a living web—the past, the future.

Not just the lives I’d lived—but the ones I hadn’t.

The choices that had never been made, the ones I’d sacrificed, even the ones the king had cut.

All woven together into a vast, living tapestry—and I stood at the loom.

Castiel knelt beside me, hand light and comforting against my back. “What do you see?”

“Everything,” I whispered. “Every thread. Every loop. Every wrong turn…and the potential connections to forge in order to make it right.”

Awe softened his expression as he stared at me. “You’ve become what he fears.”

The position was so different to the terror that had followed me ever since setting foot in the Thorndale court.

For so long, I’d believed I was just a piece on the board—a girl with a mission, yet still a tool the reigning ruler saw fit to abuse.

Only did I realize that I wasn’t here to follow a pattern… but to rewrite it .

But I was more than merely the pawn the king had made me believe he controlled—all this time I had been the queen, more powerful than the king had ever suspected.

I lifted my hands, staring at them, as if seeing them for the first time.

I turned them over, palms up, then back again, watching as light glinted faintly, a subtle but steady warmth that bloomed beneath my skin.

The chamber brightened as I rose slowly to my feet, the hourglass’s sands shimmering, as if awaiting my instructions.

My gaze lifted to the ceiling of the Chamber of Timelines.

What had once appeared as scattered points of light—constellations etched across the vast stone canopy—now shimmered with movement, threads that shifted and danced not randomly, but in response to me.

My heart pounded as I stepped closer. The strands swirled like a wind-caught ribbon, some coiling tighter, others unraveling like threads pulled loose from a tapestry.

“Do you see that?” I asked breathlessly. “The magic is alive .”

Castiel’s eyes narrowed as he followed my gaze. “I don’t see anything.”

I raised a trembling hand. In silent answer, one of the golden threads descended towards me, drawn as if summoned. It hovered near my fingertips, pulsing faintly with light, warm and strangely familiar to the touch, like something long-lost finally found.

My breath caught in sudden understanding. “I think…I can manipulate the timelines.”

Castiel stared at me as if seeing someone unfamiliar, yet intimately known.

“This is your inheritance. Is this the power the king covets that caused him to allow you to live, rather than rewrite the timeline and erase you completely? He couldn’t risk it, for you were never mere leverage—you were the last of the bloodline that possesses power our own line does not, the only one left who could do what he feared most… as well as what he longed for most.”

My fingers closed around the thread. It responded to my touch, pulsing with memories not my own. Some were tangled, others frayed or severed—burdened with sorrow and grief, scars of choices made with cruelty. I brushed my fingertips along one, and a vision rippled through me.

A town razed in the name of rebellion. A family executed in silence. The king standing above it all, high on his balcony, unmoved as the crowd wept beneath him.