Ethan felt his body being yanked toward the mana sphere's glowing core.
His form stretched in impossible ways, twisting and spinning as the sphere swallowed him whole.
His senses dulled. The turbines' deafening roar faded, and the searing agony of his body being bent and compressed into unnatural shapes vanished entirely.
Even his vision darkened, leaving him adrift with only his racing thoughts.
'Am I dead…?' Ethan wondered, straining to glimpse anything through the suffocating void.
'Is this what it feels like?' he asked himself.
Ethan knew of the gods' existence—a truth confirmed by mages who, blessed with divine power, could wield the universe's mana and magic.
Even those born with mana weren't guaranteed such sacred blessings, forced to rely on intricate technological tools instead.
Yet doubts gnawed at him. Was this what the afterlife was meant to be? Would he drift as a lone consciousness in this desolate, empty void for eternity?
He tried counting seconds, clinging to the hope that his consciousness would soon fade without a physical body to tether it.
But it was futile. Hours slipped by, yet his awareness endured, and he lost all sense of time.
Adrift in the timeless abyss, Ethan sank into his memories, reliving every choice that had led him to this fateful moment.
He recalled his resolve to become a researcher, the accolades and honors for his groundbreaking discoveries in magic despite lacking mana himself.
As a child, he'd dreamed of being a mage, but when he learned he was born without mana, he poured his heart into his studies.
It brought him joy. Even without mana, he could craft innovative tools to empower those who possessed it.
Even if the gods withheld their elusive blessings.
'But… maybe it was all a mistake,' Ethan reasoned, haunted by the Collider and the brutal wars waged on his home planet to seize its power.
His thoughts churned restlessly, flashing between Emma's radiant smile and the grim sight of her lifeless body.
He thought of his aunt, who raised him after his parents' tragic deaths, recalling her beaming pride at his graduation and the way he'd held her frail hand when she passed after years battling a relentless illness.
To Ethan, his life had been painfully short. He longed for more time with those he cherished most.
As he delved deeper into his past, a faint light flickered—a glimmer at the end of a tunnel, rushing toward him, piercing the oppressive darkness with startling speed.
Mesmerized, Ethan fixated on the light, but it vanished abruptly, plunging him back into the void's cold embrace.
'But what…?' he thought, stunned. 'Am I still trapped in the Collider?!'
No one truly understood how the machine functioned, though it was nearly proven to send information—or even objects—back through time's elusive currents.
The Collider had never been used effectively, partly because it was deemed too perilous, and Ethan had abandoned his research when he uncovered the lab's horrific human experiments to force it to work.
But as he reflected, Ethan realized he'd never pinpointed how far back in time it could reach.
'So that's how you work,' he thought, a flicker of pride for his creation sparking within him.
With renewed determination and a fierce desire to rewrite his fate, Ethan plunged back into his memories.
He saw himself in college, hunched over his thesis; in high school, laughing with his magical sciences teacher. But it wasn't enough.
The light now enveloped him, forming shimmering crystals that reflected his memories in a kaleidoscope around him.
He needed to go further back. Tweaking the past wouldn't cut it—he needed every possible moment to prepare and reshape everything.
'More! Please, let me go further back!' he pleaded.
Ethan pushed past his early days in elementary school, dismissing those fleeting, innocent moments.
'It's not enough! If I'm going back, I need everything! I have to save Emma, my friends, find a cure for my aunt!' he urged.
It was a gamble, but to Ethan, the more time he had to mend the world, the better equipped he'd be.
Then a crystal materialized before him. In its vast, gleaming reflection, Ethan saw himself at three years old, grinning at his image in a mirror.
He looked joyful, dressed in crisp new clothes his mother had chosen before she and his father left for a business trip.
His earliest memory.
'No! It's not enough! There's still something I need to change! Just a little further, please!' he begged.
But nothing shifted.
Instinctively, Ethan knew—this was the furthest he could go. Even time travel couldn't rewrite every wound.
He envisioned himself being swallowed by that memory as the surrounding crystals shattered, their fragments blending chaotically before dissolving into nothingness.
He still recalled everything, but he knew his world—all his experiences—had been erased by this choice.
He sighed in anguish, bracing his heart for what awaited.
He could feel his tiny hands and feet. His senses surged back as his consciousness settled into his past self.
He stared at his hands, opening and closing them to confirm this wasn't some cruel dream.
It felt achingly real. Then he heard murmurs outside the room—a woman's voice. His aunt.
She sounded anguished, struggling to articulate something through her pain.
Ethan caught his reflection in the mirror. His body was small, clumsy, fragile.
'The Collider actually worked,' he thought.
'I achieved the impossible, and now I have a chance to fix everything, so why…' he wondered.
He stared at his face in the mirror, tears streaming uncontrollably, his right hand pressed against his chest, clutching at the ache within.
'Why aren't I happy?' he questioned.
At that moment, his aunt eased the door open, stepping inside. Ethan turned to her, tears still glistening in his eyes.
He saw her shock at his weeping, though her own eyes were red, her cheeks swollen from her own sorrow.
She stumbled toward him, kneeling to his level and pulling him into a fierce, trembling embrace.
"Everything's going to be okay, I swear we'll be okay," she whispered, though her shaking body betrayed her fragile resolve.
Ethan let himself sob like the small child he'd become, clinging to her, overwhelmed by frustration and grief.
His earliest memory—the furthest the Collider would allow him to go.
The day Ethan learned his parents had perished in a tragic accident.