"Dude. Wake up."
"It's no good — he is totally blacked out. Are you sure this is the 'me' you're looking for? He got knocked out by a mere drifted."
"Haha. We all had to start somewhere, didn't we? Relax, I have other backup plans."
"If you say so…"
"Alright dude, we know you can still hear us, so I'll get straight into it. You will need to go to six timelines…"
"The first one is…"
"Second, is…"
"Thirdly…"
…..
"Even if you forget, it's totally cool. This message is embedded in your Time Core now, it will guide you when you reach it."
"Good luck!..... Oh, and one last thing."
"The name is Continuum. And hey — give it your best shot to create a splendor."
***
Silence.
Not the peaceful kind — but the absolute kind; so complete, it felt heavy.
But there was one exception for as far as Aurora could remember, it's the two voices that were talking inside his head.
One voice was energetic, casual, brimming with confidence who did most of the talking, and the other had nothing but doubts.
Aurora opened his eyes.
The pain was still there, dull and spreading across his side, but everything else was… wrong.
At first there was no sound, and a wave of panic surged through him, as he questioned if the impact had damaged his hearing.
The thought of becoming deaf clung desperately, until his eyes focused on something that made him feel like he was dreaming.
Outside the shattered window, the world had stopped.
A police car hung mid-skid, with its tires hovering inches above the asphalt.
A curtain of shattered glass hovered in the air like a frozen storm, each fragment catching the red-and-blue light from the siren that no longer pulsed.
Flames stood perfectly still, their shapes preserved like sculptures of fire.
Aurora staggered to his feet, heart pounding.
'What…?'
The abomination, the monstrous serpent that was guilty of throwing him into a building was nowhere to be seen.
He climbed through the broken window, carefully avoiding shards that could carve into his already failing body.
Again, to his surprise, there were no sounds of the glass crunching beneath his shoes.
Curiously, Aurora reached out with hesitation, and brushed his fingers against a shard of floating glass.
It did not move.
This wasn't something science could explain — not the kind he'd learned, at least. Only a few movies Aurora had half-watched in the past have scenes similar to the frozen world in front of him.
Of course, his main takeaway from those movies were photography techniques.
He pulled his hand back quickly, heart racing.
'Am I dead?'
The thought came unbidden, cold and sharp.
But the pain in his side argued otherwise. So did the weight of his body, the ache in his muscles, the frantic rhythm of his heart.
He was alive.
And very much so compared to the world around him.
He walked. Each step felt strangely loud in the vast quietness, even though there was no sound at all.
He passed frozen civilians mid-flee, their faces twisted in fear, coats fluttering without wind. A child's dropped shoe hovered above the pavement, laces undone.
That was when the impossible conclusion Aurora had settled into certainty — time had stopped for the world but him.
Cold sweat soaked through Aurora's jacket. His breath came shallow, uneven; he felt like an intruder trespassing inside a forbidden realm.
Then something moved.
Not ahead.
Not behind.
But beside him.
Aurora froze.
At first, he thought his mind was breaking under the strain — that the silence had finally driven him mad.
But then he saw it: there was a faint distortion in the air, like a heat haze without heat. A ripple, subtle yet undeniable, cutting through the frozen world.
It slowly widened—
Reality was peeled back—
And from the tear slithered a familiar shape.
The serpent emerged soundlessly, with its colossal body phasing into existence one segment at a time.
It looks like it's partially healed from the collision, there were no more bruises and burns to be seen. The purple glow from its half-healed deep wound pulsed faintly, out of rhythm with everything else.
The snake lowered its head, with Aurora's figure imprinted in its eyes.
It remembered him.
No — it had been looking for him!
Aurora staggered backward.
The serpent struck.
There was no wind, no sound — just the sudden displacement of space as its massive body tore through the frozen street, shattering suspended glass into drifting constellations.
Aurora's body dodged on its own, pain flaring through his ribs as the creature's fangs passed inches from his head.
He scrambled to his feet with adrenaline rushing through his body, effectively drowning out the agony.
"Why can you move?" He shouted out of despair — then remembered that sound did not exist here.
The monstrous snake displayed a moment of hesitation, as if it was also surprised by the fact that this human can move when time had stopped. But it was only for a moment, the confusion did not last.
Its body coiled again with muscles tightening, preparing for a second lunge.
Then—
A line appeared in the air.
Perfectly straight. Perfectly still.
It glowed faintly silver, slicing through the frozen world like a blade drawn across glass.
Aurora stared, breath caught in his chest.
The line split open.
Out of nowhere, the sound returned in a gradual, yet violent rush.
Sirens screamed back into existence—
Fire roared—
Shattered glass rained to the ground.
The pressure slammed into Aurora all at once, knocking the breath from his lungs as time resumed.
And through the opening stepped them.
Figures clad in dark, layered combat suits emerged from the rift. Before Aurora could make sense of them, the serpent struck again — faster, and more vicious.
However, these figures were not intimidated at all. One of the figures stepped forward; He was tall — standing well over two meters. Calmly, he reached into the air.
Next second, a golden greataxe manifested in his grip. Its sunlit blade was broad as a door, etched with glowing runes. The greataxe looked as if the weapon itself carried the weight of a fallen sun, yet the tall man raised it with one hand effortlessly—
And followed a single, devastating swing, he smashed the incoming serpent into the building next to them.
"Hour one," the man said calmly:
"Minute thirty-six. Second… forty-two."
"Target acquired." Without looking back, he continued:
"Eradicate."