The night no longer felt like night.
Above the ruined world, the sky was a fractured mirror—shards of light and shadow sliding against each other like broken glass. Stars blinked in and out, the moon split into three halves that kept shifting places.
Elara clung to Aelric's back as his corrupted wings carried them over burning fields. Below, people screamed, their timers flickering wildly. Some lived when they should have died. Others turned to dust mid-step. Time itself had gone mad.
And every few seconds, a single phrase burned in red across the sky for all to see:
OUTLAW OF ETERNITY: AELRIC VEYNAR.
Elara could feel every gaze below turning upward. Fear. Hatred. Reverence.
And then the hunting began.
---
The First Hunters
It started with a tremor.
Far below, the ground split. Out of the fissure rose figures not of flesh, but of pure white light. They carried spears made of shifting digits, their faces blank masks with glowing clocks where their eyes should have been.
The System had given them form.
"Protocol Enforcers," Elara whispered in dread.
One lifted its spear toward the sky.
> [Target Locked.]
[Commence Erasure.]
A beam of searing light shot upward.
Aelric twisted mid-air, his corrupted wings folding like armor. The beam grazed him, searing a black scar into his claw. Smoke hissed from the wound—but he only laughed.
"Finally," he muttered. "Someone interesting."
---
The Chase
More beams followed, streaking upward like shooting stars. Aelric dodged through them with impossible reflexes, weaving across the shattered sky. Elara clutched his chest, her stomach lurching as the world blurred around them.
The Enforcers didn't stop. With every strike, more of them crawled from the broken earth, dozens, then hundreds. Their voices merged into a single metallic chant:
> [Outlaw. Outlaw. Outlaw.]
Elara shouted over the chaos, "You can't fight them all!"
Aelric grinned. "Who said anything about fighting fair?"
His corrupted wing snapped open, releasing a storm of black feathers. Except they weren't feathers—they were blades of shadow, each one twisting like liquid knives. They rained down, slicing through the Enforcers in flashes of black light.
The constructs shattered into fragments of glowing numbers that dissolved into the void.
But for every one destroyed, two more emerged.
---
A Glimpse of the Future
Suddenly, Elara's timer flickered.
[0:00:00 → 12:04:31 → 7 Years : ERROR → 0:00:00]
And with each flicker, visions flashed in her mind. Cities swallowed in oceans of time. Aelric standing alone against an army of gods. Herself—dead, alive, dead again.
She gasped, clutching her head.
Aelric noticed. "What is it?"
"The future," she choked out. "I saw… pieces. The more you fight, the more everything unravels."
His grin only widened. "Then let's unravel it faster."
---
The Sky Cracks
A roar thundered across the horizon.
Not from the Enforcers. Not from the people below.
From the sky itself.
The broken shards above split wider, and through the gap descended something massive—a figure armored in gold and obsidian, its wings made not of feathers but of spinning gears and burning suns.
Its voice shook the earth.
> [Designation: Arbiter.]
[Role: Hunter of Outlaws.]
[Judgment Commences.]
Elara's blood turned to ice. "That's not an Enforcer. That's—"
"A boss fight," Aelric finished, eyes glowing crimson. "Finally."
---
Clash in the Sky
The Arbiter raised a colossal sword made of frozen time. The blade glimmered with every possible future at once. One swing could erase centuries.
It brought the sword down.
Aelric hurled himself upward, corruption trailing like fire. His obsidian claw met the Arbiter's blade with a deafening shockwave. The clash shattered clouds, rippling across the fractured heavens.
Elara screamed, the impact rattling through her bones.
The Arbiter's eyes burned white.
> [You should not exist.]
Aelric's grin was manic. "Neither should you. And yet—here we are."
He twisted, forcing the Arbiter's blade aside. His corrupted arm latched onto the golden armor, burning holes straight through it. For a moment, it seemed like he might win.
But then the Arbiter's gears turned. Time itself rewound around its wound, knitting it back together.
Elara realized in horror: "You can't kill it. It rewrites itself!"
---
A Dangerous Idea
Aelric smirked, panting, his corruption pulsing faster than ever. "Then we don't kill it."
He looked down at Elara, still clinging to him. His crimson eye gleamed with reckless intent.
"We steal it."
Before she could ask what he meant, he spread his wings wide, shadow flooding across the sky. The corruption reached out like tendrils, not to destroy—but to consume.
The Arbiter roared, thrashing, its form glitching as black veins crawled across its golden body.
Elara's heart seized. "Aelric, no! If you take it into yourself—you'll lose what's left of your humanity!"
He grinned wider than ever. "Who said I needed it?"
---
The Bite of Corruption
The Arbiter's light flickered. Its gears slowed. Its sword wavered.
And then, screaming, it was dragged inward—into Aelric's body.
The sky fell silent.
Aelric floated, trembling, wings shuddering. His corruption now burned brighter than ever, his body almost more shadow than man. But his grin… his grin never faltered.
He whispered, voice ragged but sharp:
"I'm not running anymore. Let the hunters come. Let the gods wake. I'll devour them all."
Elara stared at him, tears in her eyes—not of awe, but of terror.
Because she wasn't sure if the man she cared about still existed inside that shadow.
---
To Be Continued…