Master Chronos returned just before dawn, appearing in my chambers as I finished retrieving the last evidence cache."You found them all," he observed, looking at the accumulated proof spread across my floor. "Good. You'll need every piece for what comes next.""You said you knew my father. But you're more than that, aren't you?"He smiled sadly. "Perceptive. Yes, I'm more." He waved his hand, and time stopped. Not slowed—stopped. Dust motes froze in sunbeams, the wind outside halted mid-gust. "This is my true cultivation—Temporal Sovereignty. I exist outside the normal flow of causality.""That's why you look ancient but move like you're young.""I'm both. All ages simultaneously." He sat on my bed, suddenly looking exhausted. "Let me tell you the real history of the Jade Kingdom. The one erased from all records."The room shifted, becoming a viewing chamber of the past."Six hundred years ago, there were no Four Pillars. The kingdom was founded by four friends—Marcus Chen's ancestor