The void no longer merely tested him. It studied him.
Chronos felt it in the way the beasts moved. They no longer struck like blind predators. Their eyes glimmered with cunning, their strikes mirrored his own. The void itself had become his rival, forcing him to fight against shadows that wore his strength.
The pendulum tolled, silver sands trembling.
Two creatures stepped forth.
The first was lithe, its claws wrapped in acceleration. Each twitch blurred into streaks of silver, faster than lightning. The second was massive, its every step dragging deceleration across the void, its weight slowing space and pulling him into a suffocating mire.
Chronos' chest tightened. His powers, split between enemies.
The pendulum tolled again. The duel began.
The first blurred forward. Its claws slashed across his chest before he could even inhale. Pain lanced through him, silver blood spraying. He staggered back, ribs screaming.
The second moved then, its step cracking the ground. The air itself grew heavy, his arms sluggish, his breath dragging like stone through mud.
Two extremes. Two reflections of himself.
He accelerated, lunging at the faster beast, but its claws were quicker still. Sparks lit as it shredded his forearm, his skin peeling back to glowing scars. He pivoted toward the slower one, but each step dragged harder, his knees threatening to buckle under invisible weight.
If I fight one, the other will break me. If I split myself, I am nothing.
The faster beast slashed, cutting across his shoulder. The slower one raised its arm, a hammer descending with crushing inevitability.
Chronos' emblem flared. His veins burned.
The pendulum tolled.
And in the stillness between, something broke.
Acceleration burst—not tethered to his body alone. A fragment split off, a shimmer of silver sand.
It looked like him. It moved like him. It surged forward a heartbeat ahead of his true self, striking the faster beast. The creature faltered, claws clashing against a phantom blow.
Chronos gasped. He had not moved—but he had.
The beasts lunged again. He tried once more. Another fragment split left, a silver phantom. It drew the slower beast's hammer-strike into empty air, buying him the breath he needed to move.
The fragments weren't perfect clones. They were echoes of possible moments, drawn from bent timelines. But they obeyed him.
Chronos surged forward, weaving between his own phantoms. One afterimage distracted the faster beast, another slowed the slower one. His true body struck, silver fist blazing.
The fast one cracked, shattering into sand.
He turned on the slower beast, his phantoms dragging it down. He struck once, twice, then crushed its skull beneath a final blow.
Both dissolved into dust.
Chronos collapsed to one knee, chest heaving. Blood dripped from torn wounds, his muscles screamed. But his lips curved faintly.
Not just acceleration. Not just deceleration. Fragments. Echoes. My future, my past, my present—woven together.
The fifth year became the year of phantoms.
At first they flickered, weak, dissolving before they struck. He trained relentlessly, forcing them into stability. Hours bled into days as he split himself again and again, until the phantoms moved almost seamlessly with him.
He learned to bend them creatively:
Against a sand-born Chimera, he split into three, one phantom tearing at its goat head, another at its serpent tail, his true body crushing the lion's skull.
Against a griffon whose wings scattered minutes into dust, his phantoms circled like predators, dragging its movements until he shattered its chest.
Against a serpent-dragon of fractured timelines, he layered echoes one after another, overwhelming it with a storm of himself.
He bled. He collapsed more than once. But he always rose.
By the end of the year, his phantoms no longer flickered. They struck with weight. They distracted, shielded, and cut. They turned him from one fighter into many.
In meditation, the changes became clear.
The void within him no longer wavered as haze. Silver rivers flowed steadily, reflecting pendulum-light. Mountains of clockstone rose higher, no longer crumbling when he touched them. Plains of frozen sand stretched farther, stable and vast.
At the center, the great clock pulsed brighter, its pendulum swinging in rhythm with his heart. The sound no longer crushed him. It empowered him.
He walked the rivers in silence, shaping currents. He stood atop mountains, willing them higher. He froze and released sands at will. The realm was no longer something he endured. It was something he created.
This is my world. My image.
Yet even in progress, the future loomed.
The pendulum tolled heavier, slower, as if weighing more than time. The sands whispered darker fragments—storms of beasts greater than these, storms that even his phantoms could not overwhelm.
Fear pressed at him, sharp as it had when he was a boy bleeding in the dark. But fear no longer ruled.
He trusted.
Trusted the scars carved into his body. Trusted the rhythm of his realm. Trusted the phantoms born of his will. Trusted himself.
For the first time, he smiled not with defiance, but with pride.
I have endured. I have grown. I can trust myself.
At the close of his fifth year, Chronos stood at the heart of his realm.
His form was no longer boyish. His swimmer's build had sharpened into that of a young Titan—lean, scarred, balanced between grace and power. Silver hair fell across his face, framing sharp features hardened by struggle. His silver eyes glowed steadily, fierce but calm.
He spread his hand. The sands rose in answer, forming three phantoms, each moving in echoes of himself. They bowed and dissolved into dust.
Chronos looked up at the great clock. The pendulum swung, eternal, unyielding.
"Year five," he whispered, voice steady, calm, resolute. "And still, only the beginning."
The pendulum tolled. The void roared. Chronos surged forward with his phantoms, silver light blazing, ready to carve the future into shape.