You can't kill time. But you can make it suffer.
---
They entered the Vale of Forgotten Clocks three days later.
It wasn't a place. It was a question left unanswered.
No sun. No moon. Only a golden twilight—eternal and sourceless. The wind ticked like gears grinding in reverse. Every tree they passed bore clock faces instead of leaves. Some were stopped. Others moved counterclockwise. None ticked in unison.
Naomi spoke first.
"We've entered a temporal paradox."
Silas grunted. "I hate puzzles."
Even his tone held unease. The sin around him—the constant pulse of Wrath and Envy—felt sluggish here, like sin itself aged the longer it stayed.
The land felt aware. Not sentient. Worse.
Expectant.
Naomi's threads pulsed erratically. They twisted into loops, even when she didn't move.
"Something's rerouting causality," she muttered. "I keep glimpsing the same futures."
Silas paused. "Then we're walking through time like it's a hallway. Not forward. Not backward. Just... around."
The wind stopped.
A low chime rang through the air.
Not a sound. A permission.
Silas inhaled. "He's watching."
Naomi nodded. "Let him."
They stepped deeper into the Vale—and the world shifted.
Time unzipped.
One blink, and they stood at the edge of a vast white room made of marble, gears, and silence. Clocks floated in midair, suspended like constellations. None of them ticked.
A man stood in the center. Or rather, a concept dressed in human shape.
His face was blurred—never the same twice. His eyes were hourglasses. His skin shimmered with every year that ever was.
"Aevum," Naomi whispered.
> [Trial of Sector 6: Chrono-Chamber of the God of Time - BEGIN]
The god did not speak.
He raised a single hand—and the room detonated.
Silas flew backwards, crashing through two temporal barriers. Naomi twisted through five timelines in a blink, landing with blood pouring from her ears.
Time split.
Suddenly there were five Silases—each fighting a version of Aevum across fractured battlegrounds. Naomi blinked and saw her own deaths in rapid succession—stabbed, drowned, erased.
"This isn't combat," she gasped. "It's... editorial violence."
Aevum spoke then—once.
"I am not a god of moments. I am the inevitability of every mistake you'll ever make."
The world warped.
Naomi saw herself as a child again, being dragged away from a funeral. Then again, cradling her own corpse. Then again, staring into Silas's lifeless eyes.
Silas clenched his fists. The versions of himself scattered across the timelines were screaming—some in rage, some in horror, one in laughter.
He invoked Pride, channeling a singularity of selfhood so strong it collapsed the false Silases into him. All versions condensed into one—one that chose pain over perfection.
Naomi's threads wrapped around her spine, reinforcing her core identity. She reached back into the timeline, yanked out her still-beating future, and merged with it.
The god flinched.
"You devour paradox," Aevum said. "You eat the loop. You unmake the knot."
"Good," Naomi said, eyes glowing. "Because you're next."
They attacked.
Sin and thread collided with time incarnate. Aevum wielded eternity like a blade—cutting days into pieces, skipping hours like stones across a river. Naomi bled decades. Silas screamed centuries.
The chamber flickered—past, present, and potential future blinking in and out of alignment. Statues of gods they hadn't met yet burned and reformed in cycles. One second Naomi was fighting a mechanical titan—next, a woman who looked just like her.
She snarled. "Enough of this."
Naomi stitched the god's gears into a loop. Silas infected the moment with Sloth, dragging seconds into minutes, locking Aevum's reflexes.
Then they struck together.
Their blows landed in every moment at once.
Aevum staggered.
"You do not belong here," he hissed.
"We never did," Silas whispered.
He invoked Envy—and wanted Aevum's immutability.
It landed.
Aevum screamed.
Naomi's threads rewrote his name.
And time screamed with him.
> [Trial Cleared: Vale of Forgotten Clocks]
[Reward: Gearheart Sigil – Grants ability to lock time for 6 seconds once per day]
[Path Unlocked: Sector 7 – The Clockmaker's Regret]
The clocks shattered.
Seconds leaked into the dirt like blood. Centuries wailed and faded.
Naomi collapsed, coughing blood.
Silas knelt beside her, silent.
"I saw all of my deaths," she murmured. "All the ways I failed you."
Silas didn't meet her eyes. "And I saw the ones where I killed you."
The silence between them wasn't cold. It was earned.
They sat in the broken silence of a godless hour.
Then they stood.
There were more gods to kill.
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