Many of the noble houses of the Imperial aristocracy of the Hirschbuck Empire can lay claim to unusual talents. But none more so than the members of House Kalisari, the scions of which have inherited a peculiar affinity for time magic ever since the House’s first founding by a long-forgotten ancestor. The strange talent tends to manifest in unpredictable ways. Most inheritors possess only a weak power to modify time by seconds, occasionally minutes. Others possess temporal powers associated with dreams and divination, and have been uniquely placed to avert incoming disasters dreamed of nights before. But none of House Kalisari have ever approached the talents of the legendary man nicknamed the “Lord of Time”, supposedly born with the ability to reposition himself anywhere on history’s timeline as he saw fit, or to pass centuries as if days or days as if centuries.

Such outlandish tales of sorcery have echoed through generations of Kalisari descendants. And the story of the Lord of Time might be believed if there was even a shred of evidence for his existence, which surely he would be uniquely able to provide. But the Lord of Time’s glaring absence from any formal chronicle of family history and the declining fortunes of House Kalisari has cemented him as a myth. And House Kalisari’s fortunes are declining rapidly. Some have surmised the unusually short lifespans of the bloodline must be a result of their unusual talents-a deadly price perhaps to be paid by one who manipulates time. Issues of ill health, infertility, and infant mortality have added to their woes. Today the members of House Kalisari number just one-Lord Shane. And almost no one alive knows of the extraordinary powers of the Kalisari bloodline, except for a chosen few and the Emperor’s court. After all, their involvement in the founding of the Hirschbuck dynasty has not been forgotten.

Lord Shane has always struck a solitary figure-a recluse whose family fortune and titles shield him from any undesirable social necessity. While fellow nobles may find him arrogant, commoners would never even have a chance to speak to a lord concealed behind so many gated walls. Only the Emperor himself seems to hold any particular sway over Lord Shane. And it is a source of continual jealousy that only the Kalisaris have maintained all of their noble privileges, lands, and titles established at the founding of the Empire. Many other aristocrats’ fortunes have greatly diminished after falling afoul of one emperor or another during its history.

Lord Shane was not an only child. He had a younger sister, Tibis, who, by dint of her superior time magic, had been due to inherit the headship of the family ahead of her brother. And the fact that she didn’t is a source of continual pain that haunts Shane to this day. The refusal of Shane and Tibis’ father, the previous Lord of House Kalisari, to engage in the pointless factional battles of the aristocracy eventually culminated in a revenge plot. Enemy nobles organized a deadly ambush for Lord Shane on one of his country estates and left him for dead. It was his sister, Tibis, who invoked the right of her ancestral bloodline to turn back time and placed the great wheel of the universe into reverse. Shane noticed his injuries vanish and then, before he had realized what was happening, returned to several hours before the attack. But his sister had drawn deeply of the well of her powers and more deeply still. The transaction had used an overwhelming amount of her life energy. And as Shane gazed lovingly at the sister who had saved his life, her mortal form disintegrated before his eyes into time shards. She vanished thereafter, lost in the winds of time.

Lord Shane could not accept the loss of his last surviving relative. And the fact that she had died to save him made her death all the more heartbreaking. Shane spent years afterward pouring over tome after tome of arcane knowledge, running experiment after experiment to find a way to peer through the cracks of time to see where she was, or perhaps to reverse time as she had done before. And ever since, Shane has lived with a guilty understanding that he has inherited the wealth, power, and privileges that should have been his sister’s as the head of House Kalisari.