Time travel is one of those notions that refuses to die, no matter how often one buries it under arithmetic. There is a fragmentary, ancient A’lárian account, etched on a set of cracked slate tablets, that claims a mage stepped backward by a single day. How this was accomplished, the text does not say. Even setting aside the logical knots such an act would create: events undoing themselves, causes appearing after their effects, histories that cannot agree with their own pasts, the vharin cost alone would be staggering. To wrench the flow of time, even briefly, would demand more power than any single nexus of the world can provide; no mage or priest I have ever studied could hope to channel such a torrent and remain intact. If the ancient blue crystals truly were “all-powerful,” perhaps they could serve as anchors or engines for such a feat; but that is speculation piled atop legend.
My professional opinion is that the slate tablets record a story told to frighten or impress, not a repeatable spell. Some fairy tales are best left untested.
— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman
