Time Crimes: Operation Aetherholt: The Birth of Virtue (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798249480639)

A Classified Chronicle from The Time Bureau Files

In a dying future where the sky fractures and entire cities vanish into violet seams, the Sylvancrest Time Bureau issues a final directive:

Eliminate Corlyn Windstream.

Engineer. Inventor. Civilizational accelerant.
The man who saved 800,000 Anari refugees from extinction across four distant colony worlds.
The man whose innovations-running water, sanitation, infrastructure-are spreading through the ancient forests of Vaelthara.

To the Bureau, Corlyn is not a hero.

He is a destabilizing variable.

A team of bounty hunters is sent backward in time to erase him before his influence reshapes history beyond control.

But when they arrive in the Griffyn lands of Vaelthara, they discover the world is already shifting.

In the eastern human empire, a holy blade has awakened-an ancient sword of impossible power that can cleave trees in a single stroke. A new order of paladins rises. More blades are forged. More warriors march toward Aetherholt, the myth-haunted forest where an ancient pool grants divine weapons... for a price no one understands.

And deep within that forest, something older than gods begins to stir.

Sylveron Windstream-forgotten patriarch, dismissed elder, living relic-feels the call of powers that predate both Anari and human faith. When holy blades begin cutting through forest and flesh alike, he journeys to the source.

What follows will ignite legend.

As armies assemble at the border of Aetherholt and bounty hunters close in on their target, three forces converge:

• A future desperate to preserve its version of history

• A human empire armed with sacred steel

• And ancient powers that have not yet decided who deserves to endure

When the first holy blade strikes-and fails-myth becomes reality.

Some will call him the Invincible One.
Others will name him the Final Test.
The forest will remember him differently.

And in the shadow of that legend, Corlyn Windstream will witness something that changes him forever.

Because some wars are not won by conquest.

Some are won by alignment.

And when life and death are forced to share the same instrument, the world changes frequency.