CHAPTER 93.
Chapter 93 – The Frost in the Veins of Time
The silver flowers wilted, and the air turned cold.
Jean felt it not on her skin, but in her bones—a slowness, as though every breath dragged behind her heartbeat. Even her thoughts crystallized, slower and heavier.
The ground beneath her shimmered into starlight, folding into a new domain: a realm of endless corridors suspended in a void of time-frozen echoes.
Clocks ticked backwards.
Raindrops hung motionless midair.
Screams never finished.
At the heart of it all stood a figure cloaked in constellations—the Fourth Pillar.
No name. No face. Just presence.
The space around it flexed with every breath, and time itself cracked and bled.
> "You who would bear the Codex," it said in a voice that echoed before it was heard. "Do you understand Time and Space?"
> "I understand what I must," Jean said, hand tightening on Solstice.
> "That is insufficient. Understanding must come from loss."
With that, the test began.
---
Jean blinked.
And she was seven.
In the courtyard of the Luther estate, holding a wooden sword, her hair still tied clumsily by her mother's hands. Whitney—a pup then—slept at her feet.
It was memory. And yet it wasn't.
She turned.
Her mother stood there.
Alive.
Smiling.
> "Jean, come in. Your brother's waiting."
Jean's throat caught.
She stepped forward. One step.
Everything around her blurred—then she was sixteen, standing by her parents' pyres.
Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she couldn't remember why she was crying. Or who had lit the flames.
She turned—
And time collapsed again.
---
Jean began falling—through years, through choices not made, paths not taken. In one, she had fled the Academy. In another, she ruled the Luther Clan with tyranny. In another, she had never met Whitney. In another, she had died at birth.
Each timeline a thread.
Each thread a burden.
She landed in a dark chamber, a clock with no hands looming above her.
The Pillar stood before her again.
> "Time is the wound you carry," it whispered. "Space is the chain that binds you. Choose your anchor—or be lost to infinity."
Jean's breath trembled.
But in the silence of her soul, she heard Whitney's howl—not as a beast, but as her guardian.
She reached not for a moment in time—but for purpose.
The Codex flared.
Time bent.
And Jean stood again, singular and whole.
---
> "You have not mastered time," said the Pillar, "but you did not shatter beneath it."
> "That is enough."
The corridor faded.
Jean stood on a shore of memory, moonlight reflecting in still waters.
The Codex whispered again:
> "Three."
She exhaled.
More tests waited.
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