Chronos Imperium: Season 3, Episode 32
The Pound of Flesh
FADE IN:
INT. THE STILLNESS - BATTLEFIELD - DAY
The episode opens on the deafening silence left by ARIS's sacrifice. The temporal vortex he created has vanished, taking the Echo Man with it for now. KAELEN stands frozen, staring at the empty space where her friend, her first ally, ceased to exist.
Her grief does not manifest as tears. It crystallizes into something cold, hard, and terrifying: pure, unadulterated rage. The violet light of her Temporal Sight flares in her eyes, no longer soft and inquisitive, but sharp and predatory, like shards of broken glass.
> (his voice soft)
> Kaelen... he's gone.
> (her voice is a low, dangerous whisper)
> No. He was taken.
She turns, her gaze sweeping across the battlefield. She sees the gateway to Kian's prison, but she ignores it. Her eyes lock onto a trail of shimmering temporal distortion—the path of a wounded and retreating MALAKOR.
> He did this. This entire war. Aris's death. It all started with him. And now, I'm going to end it.
This is not a mission to save the world. It is a hunt. A quest for revenge.
THE HUNT
Kaelen becomes the predator. She stalks Malakor through the war-torn, reality-bending landscape of the Wardens' dimension. Julian and Kenji follow, not as partners, but as worried handlers trying to keep a leash on a storm.
Her rage has supercharged her Temporal Sight. She is no longer just seeing possibilities; she is seeing weaknesses.
* Visual Scene: She looks at a massive stone archway Malakor is about to run under. Her vision shows her a hairline fracture in the stone from a thousand years ago. She raises her "magic gun" and fires a single, precise kinetic pulse at the weak point. The entire structure collapses, cutting off Malakor's escape route.
THE DARK FIGHT
She corners him in a ruined, crumbling library. Malakor, injured from the previous battle, is still a formidable opponent. But he is fighting a scientist. Kaelen is now fighting like a demon.
The fight is brutal, one-sided, and deeply personal.
* Malakor fires his energy weapon. Kaelen, seeing the shot's trajectory a split-second before he fires, doesn't dodge. She moves to where he will be after the recoil, tackling him with a ferocity that shocks him.
* He tries to use a piece of future tech, a personal shield generator. Kaelen's eyes glow as she analyzes its temporal frequency. She fires a stun pulse from her Chronon Emitter, not at him, but at the shield, perfectly matching its frequency and causing it to violently overload, burning his arm and shattering the device.
* The fight devolves into a desperate, hand-to-hand struggle. It is ugly and raw. Kaelen fights with a rage she never knew she possessed, landing blow after blow. There is blood on her face, on her hands. Malakor, for the first time in his life, is terrified.
THE REVENGE
Kaelen stands over the beaten, bleeding form of Malakor. He is at her mercy. She picks up a sharp piece of shrapnel from the floor, its edge shimmering. She holds it to his throat. This is the moment. The pound of flesh for Aris's life.
> (gasping, laughing through the blood)
> Do it. Become me. Prove that my way is the only way. Prove that order can only be born from violence.
Kaelen stares down at him, her face a mask of cold fury. The memory of Aris's smile, his passion, his belief in her, flashes in her mind. And then, another image: the memory of Julian's face after he was forced to kill Elias, the look of a man whose soul had been broken by the violence he committed.
Her hand trembles.
She makes her choice. She doesn't kill him. That would be a mercy.
She presses her hand to his forehead. Her eyes blaze with violet light. She uses her power not to kill him, but to perform a psychic surgery. She rips one, specific thing from his mind: the knowledge of how to time travel. She erases the core science, the foundational equations, leaving him with all his memories of the future, but no possible way to ever get back to it.
Malakor screams, a sound of pure intellectual agony, the sound of a god being rendered mortal.
> You wanted order. Now you can live in the one you tried to create. Forever.
She stands up, leaving him broken and powerless on the floor. She has taken her revenge, not by taking his life, but by taking his entire identity.
The episode ends with Kaelen, her face still streaked with blood and tears, turning her back on her defeated nemesis. She walks towards the swirling, chaotic gateway to Kian's prison. Her anger is spent, replaced by a cold, empty resolve. She is ready for the final confrontation.
FADE TO BLACK.
END OF EPISODE 32