Omni Pov
Time Room, Eternal Dusk
He sat on the stone floor cross-legged, shirtless, body marred by scars like old constellations of violence.
Muscles tightened with breath.
His gaze was distant, resting on the wall like it was a person waiting to be dissected.
He hadn't spoken in hours.
The Patriarch stood behind him, watching in silence, eyes flickering with a predator's glee.
Then, with a flick of his coat, he dropped beside Chrono, elbows on knees, smile crooked like a man offering candy laced with poison.
"You know," the Patriarch began, plucking a grape from a silver bowl and popping it into his mouth.
"I used to think discipline was a collar."
"But you... you wear it like a crown."
Chrono didn't look at him.
The Patriarch leaned in, lowering his voice.
"Before we begin Phase II, I need to know something."
A pause.
The Patriarch's voice cut through the silence like a scalpel.
"Tell me, Chrono… have you ever killed someone?"
End Pov
1st Person Pov
I didn't blink.
I didn't flinch.
I didn't even shift my weight.
"Yes."
The old man leaned forward, those mad, theatrical eyes narrowing like a serpent about to strike.
"How old were you?"
"Nine."
A pause.
"And how?"
I don't know what he expected—regret, guilt, shame.
But I had no such things to give.
"My parents took me on a job."
"Intelligence said Russian wizards were squatting in a Black Manor west of the Wastelands."
"Probably defectors, survivors of the war."
"We didn't talk much."
"My parents weren't affectionate people."
"They were efficient."
"We observed."
"Three days."
"Scanned for wards, residual traces of spells, living energy."
"Then waited."
I can still feel the waiting.
No food.
No sound.
Just my mother's steady breathing and my father's hand signals.
I studied everything: from the pattern of footprints to the decay rate of blood on the walls of previous victims.
Everything had meaning.
Everything was a lesson.
"The Russians came back on the fourth night."
"Three adults."
"One child."
"My parents struck first."
"Disarmed them mid-threshold."
"Wands snapped, magic sealed."
"My mother bound them with an ancient chain of invocation."
"My father gagged them with silence spells carved into their tongues."
I remember the flicker of the child's eyes—he didn't cry.
He just stood there, frozen, like he'd already seen this before.
"Then came the extraction."
The Patriarch grinned, savoring my words like wine.
"They taught me how to carve into memory vessels—soft spots in the mind where spells hide secrets."
"You have to peel the mana from the nervous system without breaking it, or the spell fractures and you lose the information."
"We worked the mother first."
"Slow cuts."
"My father made her watch as I extracted sigils from her husband's spine."
"She screamed once when I missed."
"My mother slapped me."
"Precision is everything."
"Then they switched."
"My father guided my hand while I opened her temple and read the memory threads like script."
"I remember the smell—like burning ink and saltwater."
"Her skin hummed with residual magic."
"She had more knowledge than the others."
"And then?" the Patriarch whispered, not blinking.
"The boy screamed."
And just like that, the memory sharpened.
I can still hear it—high, raw, primal.
He screamed in Russian.
My father turned, annoyed.
My mother looked back, and in that instant—an uncontrolled magical surge burst from the child.
"His magic wasn't trained."
"It reacted on instinct."
"A burst of kinetic force—like compressed gravity."
"My mother's leg shattered."
"My father took the full impact to the chest."
"Crushed lungs."
"Collapsed ribs."
He was dead in five seconds.
"My mother was still alive."
"She crawled to me."
"Her eyes were wide."
"Not with fear."
"With expectation."
"As if she were waiting to see what I'd do."
And something broke.
I don't have a name for it.
Not rage.
Not pain.
Just—severance.
I turned to the boy.
He looked smaller now.
Powerless.
He knew what he'd done.
His hands were shaking.
His face twisted in terror.
His magic flared again, but this time I was faster.
I reached through it.
Stopped it.
Locked his body in place, deeper than any physical restraint.
It wasn't simple time-stop magic—it was internal.
I seized his bloodstream, his breath, his organs, his magic—everything—and froze it.
And it nearly broke me.
It was like holding back a tidal wave with my bare hands.
Every cell in my body screamed.
My vision blurred.
My bones felt like they were vibrating under the pressure.
I could barely breathe.
My legs buckled from the exertion.
But I held him.
I forced him still.
Not just outside—but within.
His blood didn't move.
His lungs didn't expand.
His muscles didn't twitch.
He was suspended in a moment of perfect stillness, and I was the god holding that moment together.
But I didn't stop his mind.
I left that alive.
I knew i didn´t have much time before whatever i did stop working.
And then… I began.
My tools weren't clean.
Just knives my mother had left.
I didn't need anything complex.
The human body is simple when you strip away the moral hesitation.
Tendons cut the same.
Eyes rupture with little force.
Tongues can be removed slowly if you want to keep the vocal cords intact for sound.
He was younger than me.
By a year, maybe two.
Dirty blond hair, bruised lip, trembling hands.
His magic sparked like a faulty wire—reactive, uncontrolled.
He wasn't a threat.
He was data.
I dragged him down to the stone cellar under the ruined mansion.
It was quiet.
Cold.
No screaming here—just the occasional drip of water from a rusted pipe.
My mother used to say that silence is where you hear truth.
I wanted to hear everything.
He whimpered when I pushed him down onto the concrete slab.
I didn't speak to him yet.
First, I secured the wrists.
Steel cuffs from the emergency satchel.
*Click.*
*Click.*
Then I looked him in the eye. And asked:
"Where are the rest of your people?"
He didn't answer.
So I started small.
Step 1: Pressure & Bone
I broke his index finger.
Not with a tool.
With my own fingers—slowly, deliberately.
I watched the knuckle pop out of place.
Watched the blood rush to the surface under pale skin.
Watched his pupils contract.
He screamed.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHH"
Good.
Vocal cords intact.
"Next question: Did your parents keep copies of their spellbooks?"
He said nothing.
I broke another.
Then a toe.
Then the wrist—not shattered, just hyperextended.
I didn't want him unconscious.
I wanted him compliant.
Step 2: Precision Cuts
The scalpel came next.
My father always kept one in the gear bag.
"For dissection or extraction," he used to say.
I made incisions along the arm—just deep enough to bleed, not enough to sever.
The goal wasn't death.
It was mapping nerves.
Where he twitched.
How his magic reacted.
Which it did but not as much as i had thought.
Then again , maybe he needed the wand for that.
When the sparks flared, I stepped back.
Let it dance out.
Let him exhaust it.
Step 3: Nerve Testing
I exposed the radial nerve on his forearm.
Poured saltwater over the cut.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHH"
The convulsions were instructive.
I took notes in my head.
Data points.
Muscle memory.
Magical flare timing.
I spoke softly the entire time.
"This isn't personal."
"You're just a node."
"A corrupted one."
"I need to break you open."
Step 4: Psychological Collapse
I stopped asking questions.
I started telling him what I'd do next.How I'd remove the toenails.
How I'd puncture the eardrums.
How I'd bury a piece of iron in the stomach wall—where it wouldn't kill him, just fester.
He started begging.
"P,p,p,p,,pleasse"
"Le,l,l,el,el,l,let me out"
"Ppppppllease"
It wasn't fear I heard.
It was collapse.
"I don't care what they told you. "
"You're not a hostage."
"You're the reason my father's dead."
He tried to cast again.
A burst of accidental energy.
Desperation.
So I did it.
The First "True" Stop
I focused.
Everything in me screamed not to.
Blood poured from my nose.
My fingertips cracked.
My jaw locked from the pressure.
But I froze him.
The moment before he fired another burst of wild magic.
It felt like dragging a mountain across my own nerves—but I did it.
Time stopped.
Him.
His expression.
The spark of rage in his eyes.
I circled him.
Slow.
Breathing heavy.
Blood dripping from my nostrils.
I leaned in close.
"You're going to stay like this forever."
"You won't die."
"You won't breathe."
"You won't blink."
"This is what you did to me."
"To them."
I took the scalpel and carved a single line across his cheek.
"You're not dead."
"Just paused."
"Just... archived."
The Result?
The child remains frozen.
Somewhere in a sealed location only Chrono knows.
A monument to his first true act of magic.
His first rewrite of reality.
Not revenge.
Restoration of order.
"I tested his limits."
"Every nerve, every muscle."
"I learned how many layers of skin you could peel before blood loss affected cognition."
"I timed his pain responses to gauge where he stored magical resistance."
I didn't feel anger.
I felt… clarity.
Like a math problem unfolding itself.
I wasn't torturing him out of revenge.
I was studying him.
"The moment his mother's body stopped breathing, I realized: Emotions are unreliables."
"But systems… patterns… those never lie."
The Patriarch exhaled slowly, like a man watching art being painted.
"You froze him forever, didn't you?"
"Yes," I said.
"He's still there last time i checked."
"In the old ruins."
"His body suspended."
"His mind intact."
"Living inside a second that never ends."
The Patriarch laughed.
It wasn't a sane sound.
"My boy," he said, eyes alight with psychotic clarity.
"You are perfect."
"Absolutely perfect."
I said nothing.
Because he wasn't wrong.
The Patriarch chuckled once.
"You're a fucking Zion, alright."
He clapped his hands together, the sound loud and final.
"Well, boy."
"That feeling of severance inside you?" He jabbed a finger at Chrono's chest.
"That's exactly what this style needs."
"The calm before a massacre."
He stood up and cracked his neck, pacing a few steps.
"You've done it."
"Physically."
"You've clawed your way through pain most men would piss themselves from just dreaming about."
"You didn't just survive."
"You adapted."
The Patriarch spun, coat whipping behind him.
"And I'll tell you why."
"It's not just your will."
"It's not just that cold little reptile brain of yours."
"It's because your body—born in that irradiated shithole of a future—wants this."
"It was made to digest time like meat."
He stepped in close again.
"But now we go deeper."
"Now comes the mind."
"Because a blade without aim is just chaos."
"And while chaos is fun..."
He grinned, wide and deranged.
"I prefer symphonies."
Chrono didn't smile.
He didn't blink.
But his eyes burned with something new.
Hunger wrapped in control.
Madness buried under reason.
He nodded once.
And the Patriarch, who had broken so many before, felt something rare crawl down his spine.
A ripple of pride.
"Welcome," he said, voice a low growl.
"To Phase II."