The world had stopped moving.
For the first time since existence began, the clock that ruled everything — every particle, every heartbeat, every line of code — had frozen.
Even light hung motionless, as if afraid to continue its journey.
Only he remained.
Aiden stood upon a field of glass and ruin, where time itself was a broken mirror. The air was dense with the shimmer of paused lightning; rain suspended mid-fall like frozen tears. The bodies of fallen players and NPCs glittered faintly in the cold light, half-translucent, trapped in an eternal instant between death and deletion.
> [System Time: HALTED]
[All Processes Suspended]
[Singularity Condition: ACTIVE]
He exhaled. The sound was soft, hollow, but it echoed across the dead horizon as though the world itself was listening.
