The void was not just an absence of matter; it was a hungry, sentient throat that swallowed light and hope alike. I, Kaito, existed only as a collective memory of pain. My body had been dismantled with the surgical precision of a god. I was a cloud of millions of micro-plastic-sized shards, each one a jagged mirror reflecting my failure. Each microscopic fragment of my being felt the absolute zero temperature of the vacuum.
Chronos, the Right Hand of the high heavens, stood in the center of the devastation. He looked at the silver watch strapped to his wrist—a relic that didn't just tell time but dictated it. His face was a masterpiece of cold, marble indifference. To him, I wasn't even a threat; I was a smudge on a clean window.
"A predictable conclusion," Chronos's voice vibrated through the shards of my consciousness. It sounded like grinding stones. "A waste of my finite presence. I had expected a struggle from the one who carries the Glitched Emerald, but in the end, you are merely an insect that overestimates its own buzz. Now, I shall depart, leaving this fraying reality to be consumed by the silence it deserves."
He turned his back to the mist of my remains. He didn't even check to see if I was truly gone. To him, my existence was already a closed file.
The Resonance of the Dead
But deep within the million particles of my bikhra hua jism (scattered body), something stirred that was not of this world. It was a frequency that Chronos's calculations could not account for. It was Yuna. Her essence, which had merged with my heart, was not silenced by the dismantling.
Suddenly, a sound emerged from the vacuum. It wasn't a scream or a roar of defiance; it was a Symphony.
It began as a low, mournful hum that seemed to emanate from every single shard of my body. The melody was celestial, haunting, and impossibly beautiful. It was the song of a star being born in a graveyard. The million particles of my being began to vibrate in rhythmic synchronicity with her voice. From every microscopic grain of my flesh and bone, a pulsating sunehri-halki hari (golden-green) light began to leak.
The void was no longer dark. It was illuminated by a million dying sparks that were suddenly choosing to live.
Chronos stopped mid-step. His body went rigid. For the first time, the expression of a divine being wavered. He turned his head slowly, his eyes narrowing as they caught the flickering light of the shards. "I almost forgot," he whispered, his voice dripping with newfound venom. "You parasites have a habit of clinging to life long after you have been stepped on."The music grew in volume, spreading across the shattered wasteland like a tidal wave of resonance. It was a rebellion in musical form. The artificial sky—the deceptive layer Chronos had used to trap us—began to crack. Great obsidian fissures appeared in the heavens, and the fabric of the 'Calculated Reality' began to peel away like burnt paper.
"What is this heresy?!" Chronos roared, his calm mask finally shattering. "This shouldn't be happening! My calculations were absolute! My variables were controlled! How can a broken, glitched insect produce a harmony that disrupts the laws of the Era of Deletion?"
The Violent Rebirth
In a surge of divine fury, Chronos lunged at the mist of my floating particles. He raised his hand, and the air around it distorted into a localized collapse of space. "I will erase the very air you occupy! If you wish to sing, you shall sing in the gut of non-existence!"
But as his hand struck the center of the mist, a barrier of pure, singing light erupted. Yuna's melody formed a glowing sphere of protection around my shards. Chronos's Deceptive Power—the force that had rewritten the rules of our fight—hit the barrier and shattered like cheap glass. The impact sent a shockwave that leveled the ruins for miles.
Inside the epicenter, my mind was a storm. But amidst the thunder, Yuna's voice was a warm, steady embrace. "Bade bhai... Big brother... I am with you. Do not let the darkness take you. Use it. Mold it. Rule it. You are the glitch that the system cannot delete."
The million shards rushed together with a violent, magnetic force. It wasn't a gentle healing; it was a reconstruction through sheer will. Bone fused to bone with the sound of snapping tectonic plates. Muscle knit over muscle like weaving shadows. My skin reformed, etched with glowing green lines of code that flickered like a heartbeat.
My eyes snapped open. One was a piercing, radiant Emerald Green, the other a bottomless pit of Absolute Obsidian Black.
I stood before him. Whole. Reborn. But I was no longer the Kaito who had fallen. I was something that the heavens had never intended to permit.
Chronos stepped back, his breath hitching in his throat. His silver watch let out a high-pitched whine. "You... you reformed in mere seconds? The molecular reconstruction speed required for that... it is impossible. Even for a god."The Obsidian Vortex vs. The Time Eraser
"My turn," I said. My voice didn't sound like my own. It sounded like a choir of the damned, layered with Yuna's soft resonance.
I reached into the deepest, darkest well of my core—the part of me that had been fueled by the sight of my friends dying. I didn't just summon energy; I birthed a Vortex of Obsidian Smoke. A black sphere, swirling with the ashes of a thousand deleted memories, hissed and crackled in my palm. It was a localized black hole of pure, concentrated hatred.
I hurled it at him.
Chronos reacted with the instinct of a seasoned predator. He raised his left hand, and a silver glow erupted, forming an intricate geometric circle. "Time Eraser!" he chanted.
It was a terrifying, primordial magic. Anything that touched that silver circle would not just be destroyed; it would be removed from the timeline. It would be as if the object—and the memory of it—had never existed in the first place.
My black sphere slammed into the Eraser. Vrrrnnn! The sound was ear-splitting, a frequency that made the ground turn to liquid. The two powers fought for dominance, sparks of erased time flying off like lightning.
I didn't stop. I moved. I didn't run; I Glitched. One moment I was thirty feet away, the next I was behind him. I moved through the air like a broken frame in a video game, appearing and disappearing, striking with a relentless, chaotic rhythm.
Chronos spun around, his Eraser shield flickering as he struggled to track my movements. His calculated world was failing. He was no longer fighting a man; he was fighting a fundamental error in reality.
"You have a lot of time to play, don't you, Chronos?" I hissed, my voice appearing in his ear from the shadows. "Let's see how much of it you have left before the clock runs out!"
The Phantom Strike and the Truth
I gathered every ounce of my rage, every drop of blood I had spilled, and channeled it into a single, devastating punch. My fist screamed through the air, trailing a wake of dark, glitched particles. I aimed it straight for the center of his arrogant, marble-white chest.
Clang!
The impact felt like hitting a mountain of solid diamonds. My fist passed right through his torso, meeting no resistance. It was as if I was punching a hologram. My momentum carried me forward, and I stumbled, my feet catching on the uneven rubble.
Chronos appeared behind me instantly, his movement so smooth it mocked my struggle. He placed a hand lightly on my shoulder. His touch was colder than the void.You are still just an insect, Kaito," Chronos said, his voice regaining its terrifying, calm edge. "You may have learned to crawl back from the dead, and you may have found a voice to sing with, but you cannot touch the hand that writes the laws of this world. You are a character in a tragedy. I am the one who decides when the curtain falls."
I turned around slowly, my chest heaving, my breath coming in ragged gasps. The anger was still boiling in my veins, but the melody in my head—Yuna's voice—stayed my hand. I looked at him, not with fear, but with a cold, analytical curiosity.
"What is your purpose?" I asked. My voice was steady now, devoid of the earlier roar. "This deletion... the systematic destruction of everything I love... why? You said you wanted to talk. You said you were curious. So, talk. Tell me why a god is so afraid of a glitch."
Chronos looked at me, a strange, flickering light in his eyes. He realized that the 'Insect' had stopped trying to bite and had started to observe. He adjusted his silver watch one more time, and for a moment, the ticking sound stopped.
"You want to know the truth of the Emerald?" Chronos smiled, and for the first time, it wasn't a smile of malice. It was a smile of pity. "Very well, Kaito. Let us speak of the 'Era of Deletion' and why you were never supposed to survive the first page."