Morning in the border village of Vennar always started the same way.
Roosters crowed too early.
The baker opened his clay ovens with sleepy eyes.
Fishermen argued about who stole whose net even though everyone knew no one had touched anything.
Children chased each other barefoot down the dusty paths.
But for the last two months, something new had been added to that routine.
A quiet boy with a calm face and dark eyes sat on the eastern hill every dawn, watching the sunlight spill across the plains like someone studying a painting that kept changing.
That boy was Aadhiyan.
The villagers had tried not to stare at him after they picked him up from beneath the time-rift. They tried to act normal. They tried to treat him like any other orphan who had mysteriously appeared in their lives. But there was always a faint tension around him, like people weren't sure whether to bow to him or run away.
And Aadhiyan felt all of it, even if he didn't say anything about it.
At this hour, the world was quiet enough for him to hear his own breathing. He sat on the grass, knees pulled up, fingers loosely clasped. Dew shimmered around him. The sky was pale blue, warming by the second.
A breeze moved across the hill, brushing his hair aside.
Nothing else changed.
Until it did.
A sudden shimmer appeared above his palm. Not bright. Not loud. Just a ripple, like the air itself had exhaled sharply.
Aadhiyan blinked.
The ripple vanished.
But the system's voice followed.
[Temporal Rewrite: +0.2 seconds]
His shoulders stiffened.
"Again?" he whispered.
Two weeks ago, the system had told him Temporal Rewrite could rewind three seconds. Then five. Now it was slowly building on its own, increasing in fractions, like a patient machine preparing for something he couldn't guess.
He rubbed his wrist where the strange circular mark hid beneath his sleeve. Sometimes it glowed faintly when no one was looking. Sometimes it felt warm. Sometimes it pulsed like a heartbeat, even though it wasn't alive.
Aadhiyan didn't tell anyone about it.
He didn't tell them about the voice in his mind.
He didn't tell them about the flashes of alternate lives the Paradox Archive sometimes showed him—images of places he had never visited and versions of himself that made no sense.
He kept all of it inside.
Because even he wasn't sure what he was.
---
"Aadhiyan!"
The shout echoed from the bottom of the hill.
A boy around his age came running up. Mud smeared across his legs, clothes torn, hair sticking up like he'd fought a chicken and lost.
It was Eran, a village kid who had decided that Aadhiyan was his new brother for reasons unknown. Eran tripped twice while climbing the hill but got up with dramatic flair both times, pretending it was intentional.
He skidded to a stop in front of Aadhiyan, panting.
"You—huff—you gotta come—huff—now."
Aadhiyan tilted his head. "Did someone fall into the well again?"
"No!" Eran flailed. "Yes! But that's not the point!"
Aadhiyan stood slowly. "How is it not the point?"
"Because she's still screaming and the elders already pulled her out," Eran said while waving his arms. "Something else is happening now."
"What?"
"The Timekeeper bells."
Aadhiyan froze.
Eran swallowed, eyes wide. "They're ringing."
A heavy silence settled on the hill.
The Timekeeper bells were ancient relics from Yalavar, but every kingdom had one set, a gift from the forgotten era when time-magic was understood instead of feared. The bells were tied to the flow of time itself. When they rang, it meant only one thing:
Time was disturbed.
And anything that disturbed time was dangerous.
Eran grabbed Aadhiyan's hand without asking. "Come on."
Aadhiyan followed.
---
By the time they reached the center of the village, dozens of people were already gathered. Mothers held their children close. Hunters gripped their spears. The elders whispered among themselves with shaking hands.
Above the small shrine where the bell hung, a faint shimmer of silver air trembled like the world was breathing in the wrong rhythm.
The bell swayed slowly.
No one had touched it.
One ring.
Then another.
Then a third.
The village head, an older woman named Maariyam, stepped in front of the crowd. Her back was straight despite her age. Her voice carried a natural authority that usually calmed the entire village.
Not today.
"Everyone stay back," she said, raising a hand. "The bell reacts only to disturbances in the flow. No one approaches until we understand what has—"
She stopped mid-sentence.
Her gaze fell on Aadhiyan.
Not with hatred. Not with fear.
With recognition.
Like she had been waiting for this moment even though she wished she wasn't.
The crowd followed her gaze.
Eran stepped in front of Aadhiyan as if a scrawny twelve-year-old could shield him from anything.
"You don't look at him like that!" he shouted.
"He didn't do anything!"
Aadhiyan stared at the ground.
He wasn't sure if that was true.
The bell rang again.
This time louder.
Sharper.
A metallic cry that sliced through the village.
People flinched.
Children whimpered.
Eran's hand tightened around Aadhiyan's wrist.
And then—
The world blurred.
Not in a magical, glowing, dramatic way.
It blurred like a lantern flame flickering in the wind.
The houses wavered.
The ground trembled.
Casting shadows changed direction.
Aadhiyan felt his heart twist.
A time shift.
A small one.
Barely noticeable to normal people.
But to him, it felt like the world staggered.
He heard the system before he could process anything.
[Warning: Timeline deviation detected]
[Stability: 97%]
[Time-Debt Ledger: You owe 0 years]
[Reason: Unknown Chronos Disturbance approaching]
Aadhiyan blinked the dizziness away.
Unknown disturbance.
Of course.
Something—or someone—was coming.
And the bells sensed it.
Maariyam stepped closer to him, calm but tense. "Child… when you arrived, the sky froze. Now the flow trembles again. If anything follows—"
She didn't finish.
Because that's when the shadow appeared.
Not a creature.
Not a beast.
Not a person.
A shape, tall and thin, stepped out from behind a flicker of silver air.
The moment its foot touched the ground, the wind died.
Even the sound of rustling leaves was cut short.
A Timekeeper.
The villagers gasped as they retreated in panic, but they did not scream. Deep instinct, older than written history, told mortals not to scream in the presence of these beings.
The Timekeeper's form was mostly human.
Mostly.
But the longer one looked, the less human it seemed.
Its robe glowed faintly like strands of moonlight woven together.
Its face shifted between shapes that resembled faces but never settled into one.
It turned toward the crowd.
The villagers hit the ground instinctively.
Every single one.
Aadhiyan stood frozen.
Eran clutched his sleeve but didn't dare move.
The Timekeeper raised its hand and pointed directly at—
Aadhiyan.
People behind him gasped.
Eran stepped in front of him again, trembling but refusing to back down.
The Timekeeper's voice echoed across the village.
A voice that sounded like it came from every direction.
"Paradox-born."
Aadhiyan flinched.
The word vibrated in his bones.
"You do not belong to this flow," the Timekeeper said. "The Rule of Years marks every life in Vaeloria. All except yours."
Eran shook his head violently. "He didn't break anything!"
The Timekeeper's emotionless gaze didn't shift.
"You were born in a timeline that does not exist."
It lifted its hand higher.
"You must be removed."
Aadhiyan didn't breathe.
Removed.
He understood what that meant.
Not killed.
Not erased.
Just… undone.
Like he never fell from the rift.
Like he never existed.
The villagers couldn't even speak now.
Fear clenched their throats.
Eran whispered, "Run."
Aadhiyan shook his head.
He couldn't outrun time.
The Timekeeper stepped forward.
The system spoke at that exact second.
[Temporal Rewrite available: 5.2 seconds]
[Do you want to activate?]
Aadhiyan almost laughed.
It wasn't enough.
Not even close.
But then—
Something shifted inside him.
Something instinctive.
Primal.
A memory from nowhere flashed through his mind.
A vision from the Paradox Archive.
Himself running through a forest.
A Timekeeper reaching for him.
A mother he didn't know screaming his name.
A hand pulling him into a rift.
He didn't understand the memory.
But he understood one thing:
He had survived before.
Somewhere.
Somewhen.
And he could survive again.
He whispered, "Activate."
Time shattered like glass.
The world reversed five and a fraction seconds.
The Timekeeper stepped back.
The villagers inhaled sharply.
Eran was mid-sentence again.
"Run."
This time Aadhiyan grabbed Eran first.
He sprinted.
And the world snapped back into normal flow.
The Timekeeper jerked its head in surprise—not because it was confused, but because someone breaking the Rule without paying years was impossible.
The bell screamed.
The wind howled.
The Timekeeper raised its hand.
Aadhiyan could hear the raw hum of time-magic building around them.
He wouldn't survive the next hit.
He pulled Eran behind a house and shoved him down.
"Stay."
"Are you—"
"Stay."
Aadhiyan turned to face the Timekeeper approaching through the dust.
He wasn't strong.
He wasn't trained.
He didn't know magic.
He didn't even know who he truly was.
But he knew one thing:
If he didn't stop this thing here, the entire village would be erased just for being near him.
He stepped forward.
His mark glowed beneath his sleeve.
The system whispered.
[Paradox Authority: Fragment awakened]
A faint circle formed beneath his feet, thin like chalk drawn by a shaking hand.
It flickered.
It pulsed.
It felt like a heartbeat not his own.
The Timekeeper paused.
Its voice softened by a fraction.
"…A remnant of Aadhikal."
Aadhiyan didn't know what that meant.
He didn't care.
He took a single step forward.
The Timekeeper raised its hand again.
Aadhiyan clenched his fists.
And then—
A shockwave tore through the village.
Not from him.
Not from the Timekeeper.
From the sky.
A new rift tore open, much larger than the one that dropped Aadhiyan into this world.
The air warped.
The clouds twisted.
The ground trembled so violently people fell to their knees.
Even the Timekeeper looked up.
A voice drifted out of the rift.
Calm. Echoing. Too familiar.
"Found you."
A figure stepped out.
Not tall.
Not monstrous.
Not armored.
It was… another boy.
A boy who looked exactly like Aadhiyan.
Just older by a few years.
The Timekeeper's robe fluttered.
"A temporal echo…"
The boy from the rift smiled faintly, eyes colder than winter.
"No," he said.
"I'm the timeline that died so he could live."
He lifted his hand.
Aadhiyan felt the world tilt around him.
Everything—villagers, houses, the sky—warped like paint being pulled in two directions.
The older Aadhiyan looked directly at him and said:
"Run, little me. They're not after the village. They're after us."
The Timekeeper moved.
But the older Aadhiyan moved faster.
He kicked the Timekeeper straight through a house, shattering wood and stone.
The villagers screamed and scattered.
Aadhiyan stared, heart pounding.
Another version of him.
From a dead timeline.
The older Aadhiyan turned back to him.
"You're the last chance," he said quietly.
"I wasn't meant to survive. You were."
Before Aadhiyan could speak, the older one pushed him back.
"Go."
Then the older version leapt at the Timekeeper with a snarl.
The system spoke inside Aadhiyan's mind again.
[New directive detected]
[Survive]
[Grow]
[Uncover the origin of the Paradox-born]
Aadhiyan swallowed.
The village behind him was crumbling into chaos.
Two beings—both stronger than anything this land had seen in centuries—were tearing the ground apart.
Aadhiyan took a shaky breath.
He turned.
And he ran.
The first real step of his journey began in that moment.
A journey that would tear open vaults of history, shatter the rules of existence, awaken slumbering gods of time, and eventually bring him face to face with the truth:
He was not the first Aadhiyan.
He was the last.
---