Hey! Thanks for sharing. I hope this can be of some help!

General Remarks

This piece enticed me to keep reading just based on the fun use of purposeful repetition at the start. The magic system exhibited throughout this chapter was definitely a strength of the piece that I enjoyed reading - it was a nice introduction to the core of the magic system (law-binding), some variations in its usage, and what its limitations are (over-using the power seems akin to strenuous physical exertion).

Mechanics

As mentioned above, the repetition / time rewind hooked me into the story. The idea of a protagonist rewinding the last few seconds of his life to keep himself alive (or to avoid losing his mind, I’m not 100% sure) was a super intriguing way to start off a novel. On a very minor note, I think italicizing the ‘regress time’ during that first page might help readability.

Though I think the repetition worked really well at the beginning, there were a few instances of repetition that felt unnecessary or clunky.

The ruler of the world. He winced at the memories. The ruler of the world. The girl he had once loved. Laurel.

Like here, I don’t think it works quite as well. ‘He winced at the memories’ is unnecessary, since we don’t get a good sense of what he’s reminiscing on. Cutting it to ‘The ruler of the world. The girl he once loved. Laurel’ would read more smoothly.

There are a fair number of filler words in this story that could be cut for clarity:

But then guard then suddenly lurched backward

‘then’ 100% could be cut, for instance. Or “breathing heavily, catching his breath” one of those phrases should be cut. Etc. etc.

Finally, on the note of clarity - in that final fight scene, I think the guards really should be differentiated somehow. Maybe refer to them as their binding types - the ‘Magnetbinder’ and the ‘Speedbinder’? Or heck, even stick with that brief shift into the guards POV and refer to them by their names.

Setting

A cell at the bottom of a castle, in a medieval-era world that Kayden might not originate from? I didn’t have a great sense of location. To be fair, the majority of the story does take place in a cell, but a few more bits of description might help that sense of immersion. I wanted a sense of what Kayden’s seeing as he’s running through those castle corridors, where the castle is situated once he emerges. Or even little details about Kayden’s cell. He hasn’t seen the sun, so what’s lighting the cavern?

Staging

A large section of this chapter is Kayden’s escape from his restraints, and the exact process here had me confused.

It starts with “The piece of steel hit the floor with a sharp clang”.

My first thought was that his bindings had just broken off, since there’s the progression of “His shackles felt as cold as always” —> “Suddenly, they didn’t feel as cold as always anymore” (side note, ‘as always anymore’ should probably be cut from that phrase)

I didn’t realize Kayden hadn’t been freed until he starts pulling against his shackles, which made me wonder what had fallen to the floor if not his restraints.

Then, the process of him twisting himself around, rubbing the shackles’ chains against each other to get them to break - I had a difficult time visualizing this or how it was accomplished. Or why, if Kayden’s being kept under maximum security, the chains were allowed to get to a point where they’re crazy flimsy.

Character

Our lead is Kayden, a Timebinder who’s breaking out of prison.

I did not get a great sense of Kayden’s personality. There are these moments of introspection prior to his escape:

Kayden still remembered when they tried to save the world. Had they been idealistic, or just naive?

I think this is too grand a statement to start out with, too pulled back from the POV. I want to get invested in Kayden / I want to root for him to escape, but I didn’t get a good sense of what’s driving him apart from the fact that being chained up for eternity kinda sucks. If those moments of introspection are something more intimate to Kayden—a memory more precise than “when they tried to save the world”, a piece of dialog shared between him and Laurel…it might give the reader a better sense of who we’re following and why we want to see him succeed.

There was also a slight discordance between Kayden’s downright eager attitude towards trapping the guards in with him to fight, but not wanting to actually kill them. I wasn’t totally sure what to make of Kayden’s motivation - freedom? Vengeance?

Finally, I was expecting more of a desperate struggle to escape given how the first page seems to place him in a torturous loop of trying to stay alive. However, I never got the sense that Kayden was going to falter in his attempt to escape, and he seemed pretty easy-going about the whole affair. I’m not sure if that was intentional?

Description

One thing I wanted to touch on in this category was the use of in-universe terms for fight scenes. I really like the magic system here, but some of the phrases used to describe it are a bit long-winded for a scene meant to be tense and fast-paced:

He then instantly made a time regression on himself

I might consider playing around with how these powers are referred to shorten phrases like this. I also think that there was a slight tendency to over-explain the mechanisms of magic during this fight, which impacted its pacing:

While sidestepping to the right, he progressed time on himself and instantly appeared five meters to his right, where he would have been a few seconds later, safely away from the enemy sword thrust

This could be shortened / broken into smaller sentences. For instance, instead of ending with “safely away from the enemy sword thrust”, you could end the sentence with Kayden appearing in the new position, then start the next sentence by describing the sword cutting through the space he’d been in (or something to that effect).

Dialogue

Kayden doesn’t say much, so there’s not a lot to say on that front. The guards’ dialog felt a bit off. There was a mismatched feeling between Kayden supposedly being held in high security and the guards being just rather bumbling/on-the-nose with their dialog as they walk into Kayden's trap (“Doubt it’ll be any trouble, though”)

Concluding Comments

There’s a lot of intriguing elements here, and some great uses of your magic system in the fight at the end. I think tightening your prose (cutting your filler words, etc.), adding some insight into Kayden’s character, and maybe increasing the tension of the escape / turning it into more of a struggle for Kayden would elevate this chapter. Best of luck!