No one wishes to call themselves poor gardeners, or be that neighbor whose grass reaches an unmanageable level while hanging plants melt under the glaring sun. But this was a cosmic-level horror: watching the subtle, creeping signs of infection winding their way through the ancient bark of the mighty ash tree.

Long before the elders noticed the rot, a child had run through the settlement crying out warnings to empty ears, dismissed as idle fantasy while the town looked away. Only the sisters, who sought refuge and cool shade beneath the great tree's boughs when no one else would listen, caught the first faint shiver in the timber and understood that time was running out.

Then came that first snowfall, not that soft, gentle thing that made children laugh in whimsy. It was a bitter, heavy cold that crept into the marrow before you had time to realize that the chill was here.

If no one else would listen—if no one would believe the young prince famous for his lies—he would have to find a way to preserve their time wisely. But how? How do you become the adversary of time when even the gods had to bend to its rules?

He pored over tomes, texts, anything—sought out magics and wisdom in areas that his father would have frowned upon. But there was nothing he wouldn't do, no line he wouldn't cross if it meant saving his brothers. There was a small part of him that even fantasized that perhaps they would finally hail him as a hero, be fully embraced as every bit the warriors they were. But that was just a dream any child had, longing for love.

The cold rain drizzled down in buckets as he squished himself inside the small wooden castle upon the grounds known as Vanguard Plaza. He tightened himself into a fetal position, striving to find a way to covet the warmth and not feel his pains even for a moment.

He had gotten his share of beatings before, but this was far more drastic—this time, his father had striven to kill him. The child turned his green eyes to the small, impossibly delicate sphere cradled in his hands—a living masterpiece of the world tree suspended inside a frozen glass lattice, glowing with a soft, ethereal light as if the entire cosmos had been trapped in a snowglobe to buy him the one thing they lacked: time.