CHAPTER 26: THE STONE'S GIFT AND A TWISTED TIMELINE

John's phone buzzed against the table, its brief vibration jarring him from his spiraling thoughts.

He glanced at the screen but didn't open the message. Instead, a sudden thought hit him—like a key turning in a long-forgotten lock.

"That stone…" he murmured aloud.

His mind flashed back to the moment it had appeared in his palm—the smooth, warm weight of it, the final fragment gifted to him by the Divine Stone.

"Could that last piece… be my Neuro-Core?"

It made a strange kind of sense. Nothing else about his powers aligned with the world's understanding of tamers and their cores. Maybe this wasn't just some fragment—it was the very thing that made him different.

He leaned back, a small, wry smile tugging at his lips.

"Well… thank you, Divine Stone," he thought. "You actually did something good, for once."

Stretching his arms, John felt a heaviness settle in his limbs—a weariness not born of sleep deprivation, but of too many questions piling on top of each other, too many answers that only raised more mysteries.

One puzzle, however, remained persistently unsolved.

"But I still don't get it," he muttered, his brow furrowed. "Why do I get pulled into that place only after midnight? And why do I return around 9:00 in the morning?"

The routine had become eerily consistent. Midnight vanished into wilderness. Morning returned him to sterility.

He rubbed his temples, the logic threading through his mind like a needle stitching together paranoia and planning.

"I have to be careful," he reasoned.

"If I disappear from somewhere covered by cameras and return to the same place, the whole thing will be recorded. That kind of proof could ruin everything."

A plan began to form.

"So I just need to make sure… that every night, by 12:00, I'm somewhere alone. And that no one finds me until morning."

It was risky, yes—but manageable. For now.

Then, like a whisper from the abyss, a memory stirred—the voice of the Divine Stone, cryptic and cold.

"This is your chance. Power will not be given—it must be claimed."

John sat still, eyes locked on nothing, letting the words sink deeper.

The stone hadn't simply granted him a Neuro-Core. It had orchestrated the whole situation. The time slips, the silent teleportations into a prehistoric hellscape—they weren't accidents. They were deliberate gifts. A path.

A chance to tame the beasts of a forgotten world.

Beasts whose power would eclipse anything the modern world had ever seen.

"All the mystery is solved," John whispered, a strange calm descending over him.

"The Divine Stone sent me back for a reason. To gain strength no one else can."

But even as that truth locked into place, another question rose like a shadow in his mind.

"But… if all animals mutated into beasts in the future, then why are these mutated beasts appearing in the past?"

He stared at the laptop screen, but it offered no answers.

"Dinosaurs too… they should've gone extinct. But what if they mutated before that meteor came?" His thoughts churned, colliding into paradox after paradox.

"If evolution creates beasts ahead in time, how are they already behind in time?"

The contradiction clawed at him like a splinter beneath the skin.

But eventually, he exhaled, shaking his head.

"Forget it. What do I care?" he said aloud, forcing the confusion to the edges of his mind. "I just need to survive. If I die there, I might die here too. Whatever this is… I just need to live through it."

The past was a wilderness of riddles. But the present demanded his attention.

With a final glance at the swirling research still open on the laptop screen, John closed the lid and stood.

His body was tense with resolve now, not fear. There were people waiting for him. And there was a school to return to. A confrontation to face.

He stepped out of the room.

Dr. Thomas.

Dr. Luna.

Principal Anthony.

All three stood in the corridor, waiting.

And just like that, John stepped forward—toward the next truth. Whatever it might be.