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Jonathan Faz

Chapter 1

Foreboding Flames

ain. Horrible, almost unendurable pain. The feeling of fire crawling through muscles, making themquiver and contract, not relaxing until severalminutes passed by. That's all Graham Sherwood felt as he woke up one cold Friday November morning. Normalteenage kids his age felt a bit groggy in the mornings, butnot Graham. He just felt pain. Pain, helplessness, andconfusion.

A chill ran through his back and he stirred in bed, buteven that small movement hurt unbearably. It had been likethis since the beginning of November, when the really cold weather started to settle in. Ever since then, he couldn'tremember a single dream during the night, but hesuspected that

something

must've been causing his muscles tospasm and contract involuntarily while he slept. Or else he

Tempus – Shadows on the Horizon

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was deathly ill, which was a possibility he wanted to avoidthinking about.So far, the really deep pain only lasted about five minutesafter he awoke. Once those five minutes were up, all that was left was just a lingering soreness which lastedthroughout the day. This caused his already skinny body tobe even weaker when it came to sports, but it was so badthat it even caused everyday walking to become a chore.Graham turned his head slowly, feeling the tense musclesin his neck protest at this movement, and glanced at hisclock. Three minutes left, he estimated, and the pain wouldbegin to decrease.He stayed in this position for a while, wondering onceagain about what the new day would bring. Since Graham'sthirteenth birthday last October, he had become a lot betterat making friends. He wasn't the

best

, but he was okay at it. Throughout his life he had been an introvert, completely avoiding friendships because most people didn't share hisinterests. When he was twelve, however, things hadchanged—and that was an understatement.Not only had a vacation to his uncle's house led to whathe now knew was his first friend ever, but it had also led tomuch, much more. While he had been away, this completely unexpected and strange thing happened. Time as everyoneknew it had ceased to exist. Instead of the past, present,and future being separate, their boundaries were lifted oreven destroyed. Another phenomenon, called the time flux,kicked in and began transporting people out of differenttime periods into what was now commonly called the Now. The only constants in the Now were people from Graham'sown time period, which at the time was 2006, and peoplefrom the year 5050. Graham had found this odd about thetime fusion, which had seemed far too chaotic to be