Chapter 13
She raised her palm, and upon her skin she could feel a strange sensation—like dew from different centuries condensing within her pores.
"We are not merely traveling," Arya whispered, his voice muffled in a space whose acoustics seemed swallowed by emptiness.
"We are standing upon an unclaimed control center."
Nirmala nodded slowly, her eyes continuing to wander.
She watched as a single speck of dust falling from her hair did not drift downward, but instead floated horizontally, piercing through the layer of 1945, then 1880, then 1520, before vanishing into a blind point she could no longer follow.
Here, time-jumpers like them could become gods—if they wished.
Not gods who sought to alter history, but gods who witnessed all ages at once, who could choose to touch any century simply by shifting a single inch.
In that silent chamber layered with eras, Nirmala chose to sit.
She folded her legs, straightened her spine, and placed both palms upon her knees in a posture not unfamiliar—a stance practiced by seekers of tranquility thousands of years before she was born, and perhaps still to be practiced thousands of years after she was gone.
Her eyes closed.
Arya beside her stood like a statue, sleeping upright, his breathing so faint it was nearly inaudible in a space whose acoustics felt like chalk.
Nirmala was not worried.
In this place, as long as they did not move, time would not touch them.
She could let her consciousness wander wherever she desired, and that wandering—as always—carried her back to the past that shaped her most deeply.
A time when she was neither hunter nor hunted, but someone who had nearly lost everything.
"Now," Nirmala continued in a murmur barely audible, her lips scarcely moving, "we are being chased by the entire Temporal Cross-Police. They are deploying the finest technology of the future. They hunt us as though we are the greatest threat to the order of time. And do you know what, Arya?"
She opened her eyes briefly, gazing at her partner asleep in that strange upright slumber with an expression impossible to define—a blend of affection, pity, and admiration.
Then she closed them again.
"All this tension, every racing heartbeat, every cold bead of sweat along the nape of the neck… compared to standing at the brink of death and then seeing Theo Vkytor arrive to pull you out, this is like children playing hide and seek."
Within the silence that continued to layer itself, Nirmala allowed herself to sink deeper.
She knew exactly why she referred to Theo Vkytor as the writer, the savior, and the new God.
For before everything happened—before time became a hunting ground, before temporal corridors became their second home—Theo had merely been a man sitting at a desk, pouring the ink of imagination onto pages that would one day shake the world.
The novel was titled Last Prayer, a work not merely read, but lived, contemplated, and ultimately inspiring countless creations.
From it were born games that flooded the market, including the greatest among them.
Flo Viva Mythology, a virtual world funded by a conglomerate named Vostraith Legacy, a world that would later become the grave of ninety-nine percent of humanity.
"You know, Arya," Nirmala whispered again, though her partner remained asleep in that peculiar upright rest, "he never wanted all of this. He only wanted to write. He only wanted to tell stories."
Behind her eyelids, she saw once more the fragments of history recounted to her time and again.
How Theo Vkytor, in the midst of writing Last Prayer, took the time to explore the world of Flo Viva Mythology funded by Vostraith Legacy.
Not out of ambition, not out of greed, but from the curiosity of a creator watching his world reinterpreted by others.
Then came the moment when the boundary between reality and the game dissolved, when Flo Viva Mythology could no longer be distinguished from the real world, when ninety-nine percent of Earth's population was absorbed into it and only a handful remained behind.
Nirmala exhaled, and in that silent realm her breath felt like wind brushing across centuries.
She imagined Theo Vkytor alone in an almost empty world, realizing that he—a writer—was the only one who could do anything.
Six main arcs within Flo Viva Mythology.
Six layers of constructed reality that had to be conquered.
Not with swords or magic, but with understanding, with perseverance, with the conviction that the story he once wrote contained the key to freeing those who were trapped.
"He could have given up," Nirmala murmured, her eyes still closed though her eyelids trembled faintly.
"He could have said, this is not my responsibility—let those who built this machine fix it. But he did not."
The memory of that salvation now felt vividly real within her mind, as though it had happened only yesterday.
Not because Nirmala experienced it directly—she had not yet been born when that great event shook the world—but because the story had been passed down from generation to generation of time wardens like an unceasing breath.
Theo Vkytor, with all his limitations as an ordinary human, completed the six main arcs alone.
He returned ninety-nine percent of humanity to the real world.
He rebuilt what had nearly vanished.
In the silent space untouched by time, Nirmala felt her chest tighten with something she struggled to name.
She imagined Theo Vkytor—the writer, the savior—who chose to remain within the world that had once nearly annihilated humankind.
Not as a prisoner, not as a victim, but as Eshura Birtash—a man with forty-two wives and dozens of children, living a life he had never planned when he once wrote Last Prayer at his desk.
Nirmala could not fathom the kind of love that would compel someone to abandon his original world, to relinquish his former identity, and to immerse himself completely in a reality that had once been nothing more than code and algorithms.
Yet she could not deny that such a decision might have been the most reasonable one for someone who had already given everything.
"Arya," she murmured softly, though she knew he would not hear, "do you know the greatest irony of all this?"
She drew a long breath, sensing the layers of time around her quiver gently with the exhale.
"The real world was restored. They all witnessed his struggle. They saw how Theo completed the six main arcs alone, how he sacrificed time, strength, perhaps a part of his soul, to pull ninety-nine percent of the population out of the digital snare. And they were grateful. They revered him. They made him a legend told from generation to generation."
Nirmala smiled bitterly.
"But Theo himself was not there to receive any of it. He chose to remain in the world he had defeated, living as someone else, with a new family no one had asked him to build."
In the distance of her thoughts, Nirmala once again saw fragments of history that shaped the world in which she now lived and worked.
The real world restored by Theo Vkytor did not instantly become perfect.
It returned as it had been—with all its complexity, chaos, and beauty.
But it also returned with wounds not entirely healed, with subtle fractures in the structure of reality that perhaps only those trained like Nirmala and Arya could perceive.
From there all these problems took root.
From there organizations like the Temporal Cross-Police were born.
From there temporal anomalies such as Mydra 9-C emerged.
In the silent space untouched by time, Nirmala slowly opened her eyes.
Something new had just settled in her mind—a fragment of memory about the fifth arc that she had until now heard only as legend from the elders.
To be continued…