Halvenreach was always quiet in the early mornings, but today, the silence was unnatural.
Elion stood outside his shop, watching the street like it might dissolve beneath his feet. Normally, the baker would be shouting orders through the alley window, the children already chasing each other to the academy stairs, the old man across the street sweeping dust that would return the next hour.
Today… nothing. Not a single soul in sight. No footsteps. No sounds.
He checked his pocket watch. 6:47 AM.
Then again.6:47 AM.
He blinked, tapped it, checked the position of the sun—same angle as five minutes ago.Hadn't the sun… moved?
He looked up. Clouds were frozen in place like paint on canvas.
Another time-skip.
"Three skips in one week," he muttered. "It's spreading."
He turned back toward the shop—only to find Lyra standing in the doorway, holding two mugs of steaming tea.
"I figured you'd notice," she said calmly, offering him one.
"You ever sleep?" he asked.
"Not when time is falling apart."
They sat by the window in silence, watching the stillness outside. Elion sipped slowly, eyes never leaving the suspended birds hanging mid-flight. One flapped its wings too fast, only to be pulled backward a few inches—like a tape rewinding.
Lyra watched him closely. "You stopped time yesterday, didn't you?"
Elion nodded. "Only for a second. But… I felt everything. Every tick, every pull of the universe grinding to a halt."
She leaned forward, her voice low. "Then you're awakening."
"To what?"
"To who you are. To what you're meant to become."
Later that day, they traveled together to the edge of town—where reports of temporal disturbances had been growing more violent.
What they found was worse than Elion expected.
The river had been split in half, like someone had cut it vertically and forgotten to press 'play.' One side flowed normally, rushing along rocks and reeds. The other was a frozen column of water, held in mid-air like a statue.
At the edge, people had gathered in confusion. A child tossed a stone into the frozen half—only for it to stop midair and vibrate violently, stuck between moments.
Elion stepped forward, hand raised instinctively.
The moment he touched the edge of the frozen river, the world pulsed. Like a heartbeat, but inside his skull.
DA-DUM.
A second pulse. Stronger this time.
DA-DUM.
The frozen river shimmered.
"Elion, step back!" Lyra shouted—but it was too late.
A crack shot down the center of the river—then the ice-like water began expanding outward. Slowly at first, then faster, as though the concept of 'scale' was unraveling.
People screamed. The air warped like a heatwave. Trees grew taller in seconds, distorting and snapping under their own weight. The sun above flickered—as if someone were toggling through sizes like options in a menu.
Then he felt it again.
That same terrifying presence as the night before.
Biggenator.
Elion turned—and there, standing across the river on a platform that hadn't existed a moment ago, was the figure in the gold cloak.
No face. Just blackness beneath a pointed hood. No feet, just rising dust.
The golden figure raised a hand and spoke with a voice that felt like rolling thunder inside Elion's chest.
"You cling to a moment that was never yours.I will make it bigger. I will make it better."
Then the figure vanished—leaving behind a crater where space itself seemed to stretch like elastic, the sound of a ticking clock echoing from nowhere.
That night, Elion and Lyra returned to the shop in silence.
"I've read about beings like him," Lyra said at last. "Warpers. Conceptual beings. But this… this is something worse. He's not just altering space—he's rewriting the rules of scale."
"And scale is tied to time," Elion added.
She nodded. "If you make the universe big enough, eventually… time itself loses coherence. He's not attacking you. He's attacking the fabric."
Elion stared down at his hands. They were shaking.
"I'm not ready to fight something like that."
"You will be," Lyra said.
"How?"
She stood, then walked to the back of the shop—where the old training hall had once been sealed off. She pushed open the heavy door, revealing a stone room, circular in shape, with ancient time dials etched into the walls.
At the center stood a single golden ring—a pendulum hovering in mid-air, unmoving.
She turned to him, serious.
"It's time you learn Chrono Breathing.The first step to becoming what you are destined to be…The Chrono-Lord."