The ruins of tomorrow

Time was broken here.

Eiser felt it in the way the air rippled, the way the ground beneath his feet shifted between states of ruin and restoration. He landed with a heavy thud on cracked marble, the remnants of what once might have been a grand plaza. Frozen figures surrounded him—statues caught mid-motion, their expressions twisted in terror or agony.

No, not statues. People.

Trapped in time.

Eiser staggered to his feet, his body still reeling from the pull of the Paradox. He knew better than to assume anything was stable in this place. The landscape around him pulsed, shivering with unstable energy, the fragments of multiple timelines layered over one another. One moment, the plaza stood tall and pristine, bathed in golden light; the next, it was crumbling into dust, overtaken by vines and decay.

And then there was Synn.

A lone figure stood at the center of it all, cloaked in shifting shadows. His presence was a tear in reality itself, a void where time refused to hold shape. His face—once familiar—was now masked by an ever-changing blur, as if a thousand versions of him overlapped and fought for dominance.

"You shouldn't be here," Synn's voice echoed, distorted, layered with the weight of a hundred timelines speaking in unison. "This place does not belong to you."

Eiser clenched his fists, his breath steadying. "Then why am I here? Why bring me to this place if not to confront me?"

Synn tilted his head, his blurred form flickering. "You think this is my doing?" A pause. "No, Eiser. This... this is your fate unraveling. The price of your defiance."

The air around them cracked, and suddenly, time lurched forward.

The frozen people screamed.

Hundreds of voices filled the air as time restarted, only to snap back into stillness moments later. It was as if reality itself couldn't decide whether to let them live or leave them trapped in eternal pause. Their suffering reverberated through the void, an unending cycle of motion and stillness.

Eiser gritted his teeth. He had to act. He reached deep within himself, calling upon the fractured power that had only just begun to awaken. The Chrono Forge—the ability to manipulate the raw essence of time—still felt beyond his grasp, but he had no choice.

He raised a hand, forcing his will upon the chaos. Time faltered, trembled.

And then Synn moved.

He was faster than anything Eiser had ever seen. One moment, he was standing across the plaza; the next, he was in front of him, striking with a force that sent Eiser crashing into the shattered remnants of a fountain.

Pain erupted through his ribs. He barely had time to react before Synn was upon him again, a dagger of pure entropy forming in his hand. Eiser rolled aside, barely dodging the attack as the blade carved through the stone as if it were paper.

"You're still too slow," Synn murmured. "Still clinging to a reality that's already slipping away."

Eiser pushed himself up, wiping blood from his mouth. "Then I'll just have to catch up."

His fingers curled into a fist, and this time, when he called upon his power, it answered. Time rippled outward from him, a pulse of energy that forced the fractured world to pause. For a fleeting second, Synn's form flickered, caught in the wake of Eiser's control.

It was enough. Eiser surged forward, striking with all his strength. His fist connected, sending Synn skidding back across the broken plaza.

A moment of silence.

Then Synn laughed—a sound that was equal parts amusement and something darker, something broken.

"So you are learning," he mused, straightening. "Good. You'll need to if you want to survive what comes next."

Before Eiser could respond, the world trembled. The trapped people around them dissolved into nothingness, and the cityscape fractured again, reality folding inward.

A new voice filled the air, deep and resonant, carrying a power that sent shivers down Eiser's spine.

"Enough."

The sky above them cracked, splitting open to reveal an endless void of shifting stars and cosmic storms. And from that void, a being began to descend—vast, unfathomable, a force of nature given form.

Synn's expression turned grim. "You were never meant to see this, Eiser."

Eiser barely had time to brace himself before reality shattered again, and the true battle for time itself began.

---

The descent of the entity fractured everything Eiser thought he knew. Its body was a swirling vortex of time, neither fully formed nor absent, and the weight of its presence sent shockwaves through the ruins. The remnants of the frozen city disintegrated under its immense gravity, bending and folding into spirals of broken possibility.

Synn's form flickered erratically as if even he, with all his mastery over the Paradox, was struggling to remain stable.

"Run, Eiser," he muttered, his voice unusually serious.

Eiser hesitated. Synn, telling him to run? That alone was a sign of how dangerous this being was. But no—he wouldn't run. Not this time.

He reached out again, tapping into the nascent power within him. The Forge within his mind roared to life, and for the first time, he saw the threads of time—thin, golden strands woven through reality itself.

And they were breaking.

The entity spoke, though no words escaped its shifting form. Its voice was time, ancient and endless. "This existence is flawed. You are errors that must be corrected."

Eiser felt his body lurch, a force pulling at him, trying to rip him apart at the seams of his own timeline. He gritted his teeth, anchoring himself, refusing to be erased.

Synn, meanwhile, had already started moving. He blurred between seconds, appearing and disappearing in rapid succession, weaving around the destructive force emanating from the entity. "You don't get it, do you?" he muttered under his breath. "This thing doesn't see us as people. We're just anomalies. Glitches."

He turned to Eiser, his expression grim. "And glitches get erased unless we fight back."

Eiser nodded, determination solidifying within him. If this was a battle for survival, then he had no choice but to push beyond his limits.

Time itself bent as they attacked in unison. Synn moved like a shadow between frozen moments, while Eiser called upon the Forge, grasping the fabric of time and pulling. Energy exploded outward, a vortex of past and future colliding.

The entity responded in kind. With a wave of its shifting hand, time unraveled, erasing the attacks before they could even exist. The power was overwhelming, suffocating.

But Eiser didn't stop. He couldn't.

With a defiant roar, he reached deeper into the Forge, past the constraints of mortal understanding. He saw flashes of possibility—alternate selves, countless futures, paths that had never been taken. He grabbed hold of the strongest one, a version of himself that understood the true nature of time.

And in that moment, he stepped beyond himself. Beyond the present.

He became the Paradox.

Everything exploded into light.