"Sometimes, the worst monsters don't bear fangs or claws—they bear titles, sit at desks, and smile too gently."
---
Juno stepped carefully over the broken books, the shattered spines, and the crumbling carpet of the library. The unnatural silence rang louder than any scream. Her boots left shallow echoes as she walked, breath sharp, the air dense with a tension that belonged to neither past nor present—but to memory.
And memory had teeth.
She remembered now. Not just the punishment. Not just the drawings of clocks that sparked the spite of the orphanage's cold rulers. No—what came after. The teacher she'd fought—the Chimera now dead—was just one of many. Back then, she had no name, no system, no sword. Only rules. Protocols. Pain dressed up in discipline. She'd been a number, a case file, a locked door behind institutional smiles.
The head teacher—the one she had defeated—her presence spoken with fear among the children like a fairytale villain.
She had made the orphanage her playpen of cruelty.
Juno could still recall her crisp voice announcing meals to the "Deserving Units." If you followed every rule to the letter, you were fed. If you smiled without being told, you skipped a meal. If you questioned her—if you cried—you were isolated. Deprived. Beaten with a smile. And then the "Stars"—children chosen to sit near her table, fed better, praised, turned against the others. They laughed with hollow eyes, mimicking her tone.
Juno had never cried. Not once. Not in front of them.
Because crying meant weakness, and weakness was punished in ways she didn't want to remember.
Until now.
She pushed open a door at the edge of the library, expecting more corridors. Instead, what waited beyond was—
Hell.
A playground. But not the kind with squeaky swings or scratched-up seesaws. It was a graveyard dressed like a childhood fantasy.
The sky was a void—inky, swirling, static-choked, and wrong. Dim lights flickered like broken carousel bulbs, casting long, uncertain shadows. And there, spread across mulch stained dark with dried blood and something deeper—something spiritual—were piles of bodies.
Children.
Torn. Dismembered. Clawed beyond recognition. Pieces of them thrown like toys discarded by a cruel god. Some still clutched small trinkets: a cracked whistle, a bunny ear, a shoe with a smiling star. Juno felt her stomach churn.
She forced her breath to still.
This isn't real. This isn't real. This is in my head. This isn't happening—
But even as she tried to ground herself, her hand gripped the handle of the Chronosword that no longer existed. She was unarmed.
No system pinged.
No [Status:], no [Inventory:], no [Chronoenergy:].
Nothing but her. And the memories.
She stepped forward. Careful. One step at a time, passing corpses that used to be classmates, maybe, or faces she'd forgotten on purpose.
Then, she saw him.
Sitting on a blood-drenched see-saw at the very center. A man in a pristine tuxedo. Balding. Thin spectacles balanced on the tip of his nose. He was smiling.
And eating.
A small, half-gnawed limb hung limply from his pale fingers—flesh gray, bone exposed. He chewed thoughtfully like it was nothing more than a delicate biscuit. When he felt her presence, he didn't startle.
He turned his head slowly, gracefully, and smiled wider.
"Well, well," the man said, brushing crumbs—no, flecks of skin—off his vest. "My favorite time... returns."
Juno froze.
Her vision blurred. Something wet dripped down her cheek. It wasn't a tear.
Her fingers touched her skin—and came away red.
Blood. Am I crying blood?
Her breathing deepened. Her heartbeat roared in her ears like war drums. Her eyes—hazel-green with gold—began to dim, fade, whiten like a dying flame sucking in its last light.
"I know those eyes," the man said, rising. "Still the same little tick-tock mind. Always counting. Always watching. Curious, curious girl."
She didn't speak. Not yet.
Not until the rage stopped choking her like ash.
"You remember me?" he asked, walking forward with the calm of a lecturer, the menace of a snake beneath a white glove. "I'm flattered. So many of you tried to forget. But not you. You—Juno—oh, you were something special."
Her voice, when it finally came, was hollow and soft.
"…You're a fucking monster."
"Emotionally, intellectually, sometimes literally," he said, shrugging. "Especially sexually." and he smiled like a mad man.
"Motherfucker."
"Hmm. Of course," he replied with a gentle smile. "But they all liked it, they all scream first but eventually they know we're all just playing. And Junk, the ticking never stopped in your head, did it?"
She shook. But she didn't fall.
Her eyes gleamed ghost-white now. Her hands trembled, not in fear—but in restraint.
"You... I've tried to forget, but you, your..." she whispered.
"I prepared you."
She took a step closer. "You made me afraid of everything, afraid of time, afraid of people, afraid of every fucking shit in the world."
"You made yourself its keeper," he said, voice low now, hypnotic. "You should be thanking me."
"…Thank you?" she repeated, blinking. "Thank you for the blood? For the screams? For playing with us?"
She looked down at her hands—empty—but something flickered between them. A clock hand made of pale light.
"Thank you," she said softly, "for showing me the monster. Because now I don't have to fear it anymore."
He paused. The smile faltered.
"You always were the brightest—"
But he didn't finish.
Juno stepped forward, and the world around her quaked.
Time cracked.
The corpses shifted. The blood turned back into memory. And the sky began to ripple with ticking echoes.
"Goodbye, Headmaster," she said.
And the playground began to unravel.
The lights shattered, one by one.
The stars above blinked out.
And the man who once wore humanity like a suit began to distort. His form twisted—not into a chimera, not into a beast—but into nothing. As if her memory itself had rejected his existence.
She turned her back as the silence devoured him.
Then she walked.
Her boots echoed on nothingness now.
And her mind, once fractured, stitched together—slowly.
One memory at a time.
She kept walking.
She didn't need to run this time.
---
Juno's vision blurred as the sounds of the present melted away, replaced by a memory—a dark, haunting echo of what once was for a short moment. Back in the orphanage at night, under the pallid glow of a half-moon that filtered through broken windows. The corridors were silent except for whispers of footsteps and the distant thud of heavy boots on cold stone. In the deep shadows of a narrow hallway, she recalled sneaking away to the comfort room, desperate to find solace from the cruelty that had defined her childhood.
In that eerie recollection, the air was thick with dread. A group of kind, timid children, their eyes downcast and faces etched with quiet suffering, were led—by a stern, cruel figure—to the headmaster's office. The head teacher, whose presence had been a constant torment, made the orphanage his playground of fear. In hushed, trembling voices, the children were herded toward a heavy wooden door. It was late, and the corridors were dim, lit only by the flicker of a single failing bulb. As one child, barely more than a wisp of hope, stepped inside, muffled screams erupted—a sound that would forever haunt Juno's dreams. Undiscernible grunts and the sound of a strap tightening echoed down the hall, stitched together into a grotesque symphony of punishment and despair.
The memory was hazy—vague images of small bodies trembling, the sting of discipline, a classroom filled with the rustle of worn uniforms, and a headmaster whose eyes held nothing but a cold, clinical detachment as he executed his twisted justice. Juno's heart pounded in that recollection, a relentless drumbeat of terror and a desperate yearning to escape. That was when she knew she must never return to that place, that the very idea of it would shatter her spirit.
---
And now, in the present, standing before a door that led to the very heart of that tortured past, Juno's body shivered despite the relative warmth of the morning. The orphanage was no longer that memory of routine cruelty; here, time was distorted, and the remnants of that forgotten pain lurked behind every creaking floorboard and every flicker of failing light.
She stared into a long, dark corridor, remembering too well the lingering echoes of those ancient screams. Her mind churned with questions: Why did the past hold onto her with such relentless tenacity? Why had time once again dragged her back to these haunted halls? With a voice that was both determined and broken by memories, she muttered, "Time Severance…"
The words trembled at first, barely audible, and then resonated through the oppressive silence. A sudden, disorienting vibration coursed through her body. The unstable system deep within her—or what was left of it—flickered frantically as if trying to recall its functions. Her eyes widened as she felt a strange, chaotic energy surge within her. In that moment, from the depths of that power, her Chronosword reappeared in her hand. Its blade was glitching wildly, its edge fracturing in and out of existence, caught in a perpetual battle with the very fabric of time and memory.
For one breathless second, Juno simply held it, staring at the chaotic dance of light along the blade. And then, with a cry that seemed to come from all her selves at once, she launched herself forward. The unstable power crackled along her fingertips; arcs of energy lanced out, etching against the dust-covered floor. She was fighting back—she was fighting for her life.
Before her, the door of the study was flung open, revealing the distorted reality of the orphanage in its decaying state. In that moment, she saw it: the headmaster, bloodied and monstrous, standing amid shattered remnants of his twisted rule. His visage was a terrifying blend of human and void—a chimera with the soft features of the teacher she once knew, yet marred by a hungry gleam in his red eyes and stained by the gore of innocent children. His presence reeked of cold cruelty, an abomination who had once ruled over a world of suffering.
But as Juno struggled to keep her powers intact, her mind exploded with conflicting emotions. Her heart pounded in defiance as she recalled the memory of the orphanage—the harsh punishments, the coerced silence, the cruelty that had scarred her for life. And yet, even in the depths of that agony, she found a spark, a reason to be stronger. She had survived those dark days, had escaped a fate determined by those in power. Now, with her Chronosword brandishing unstable magic, she resolved to face the creature that embodied it all.
The headmaster's grotesque form lunged at her, claws outstretched, tendrils of corrupted energy trailing in its wake. His voice was a raspy whisper, promising endless torment. "You should have obeyed, Juno. You should have been silent." The words collided with the ringing in her ears as he vaulted through the decomposing bodies of the accursed children that littered the haunted playground behind him. Every step he took seemed to echo with the silent screams of those lost souls.
Juno's reflexes, driven by a mixture of raw fear and defiant determination, kicked in. She dodged to the side, her leg aching with every movement, pain like fire that seared her memory with each step. The Chronosword, still clashing with the chaotic flow of time, pulsed in her hand. She caught a glimpse of an ancient clock face embedded along its blade, its numbers blinking in and out of phase—an echo of the cruel punishments of the past.
In a surge of desperation, she yelled, "Temporal Severance!" The phrase burned through her throat like a mantra as she thrust the sword forward in an arc that cut through the fabric of the headmaster's monstrous form. The unstable magic roared in resistance, slicing across time in jagged shards of light and dark. The headmaster's scream was not one of pain but of a tortured, eternal agony as his form began to dissolve into fragments—a cascade of red, black, and shadow.
For a moment, everything paused. Time stuttered as the corrupted energies of the headmaster shattered against the blade. The ruined remains of his body flickered, flickering desperately between existence and oblivion.
And then his body convulsed violently, as though in its final throes it fought against the inevitable. A sickening crack echoed—like the sound of a thousand bones breaking—and his form was wrenched apart, hurtling into the void like broken glass. The echoes of his screams blended with the chorus of the ruined timeline.
Juno staggered back, her entire being shaking. She could still taste the acrid tang of blood, a reminder of the orphanage's endless cruelty, of the punishment she had once endured. Her mind was a storm of conflicting memories and emotions, and the power surging through her Chronosword was nearly overwhelming. But in that moment of horrific carnage, she felt an odd sense of release.
It was as if she had finally confronted the ghost of her past—a memory embodied in the monstrous headmaster—and in doing so, she had reclaimed a sliver of herself, a fragment of the lost time she had once spent in that terrible place.
Chapter: The Silence That Screamed
"Some memories don't haunt you—they wear your skin, speak with your voice, and bleed through every version of your name."
The blood on her hands wasn't metaphorical. Not anymore. The monstrous headmaster's corpse twitched, even in its impossible death. A pit of meat and black smoke, stitched together by the writhing echoes of the children he had broken.
Juno stood in that eerie dreamscape—half school corridor, half ruinous church of bone and chalk. Her system was silent now. No pings. No corrupted overlays. Just… herself. Or whatever was left of it.
Her knees buckled.
The memories weren't gently returning.
They slammed.
---
She had been fifteen. The "new eldest" orphan, after the previous one hung herself in the garden shed.
The headmaster had called her in.
"You don't seem like the others."
Of course she didn't.
He closed the door. Turned the key. The window behind him showed a moonless night. And he undid the buttons of his shirt like he was telling her it was raining.
Juno had been still. Like prey. Like time had stopped—but no. She had.
His pen had glimmered on the desk. Black ink. Golden trim. Heavy.
She hadn't even realized her hand had moved until it was already embedded in his throat.
She remembered the sound more than the sight. A wet, crackling gurgle like a symphony of failure.
And then the window. The escape. The jump. The street. Her legs bleeding from the glass. Running and never stopping.
That was the night her childhood died.
---
Back in the dreamscape, her adult self trembled. She wasn't crying tears.
She was crying blood.
It streamed down her cheeks, thick and warm. A cruel echo. The dead children around her watched silently. No accusation. No forgiveness. Just presence.
She whispered nothing.
She screamed inside everything.
Juno inhaled through grit teeth. The Chronosword trembled in her hand. Not like a weapon—but like an emotion. Like regret sharpened.
Then—
She slammed it down.
It wasn't a clean strike. It was rage. Pure, unfiltered trauma turned into momentum. It struck the skeletal floor with a burst of unstable chronoshock.
Cracks formed under her boots, racing out like veins of lightning across the mindscape.
The ground gave.
Her body fell.
No resistance. Just gravity and guilt.
Her arms flailed. The void swallowed her like a past she never wanted to relive. And in the darkness, time no longer passed. It dissolved.
She thought.
Was I ever supposed to survive?
Or was surviving the punishment?
She had worn so many versions of herself. Killer. Savior. Coward. Timekeeper. Orphan. Nobody.
But as she fell through the cracking world of her own psyche, she realized something quieter than pain.
Acceptance didn't mean forgetting.
It just meant… you stopped running.
---
Her eyes snapped open.
She was on grass.
Not cold stone. Not void.
Just grass.
She gasped, air rushing into her lungs like it had been waiting centuries to come back.
A breeze tugged at her jacket. Adult body. Juno Luminara. Twenty-one. The forest grove where things had first gone wrong in this death game.
But she wasn't alone.
In front of her stood a girl—fifteen again. That same tangled hair. That same stubborn stare. Crying blood. Her hands trembling, glitching like a corrupted memory but smiling.
Not a ghost. Not a hallucination.
A thank you.
The girl spoke without sound. "Thank you."
And then, like glass kissed by lightning—
She cracked.
Not just her body.
Her existence.
The wind pulled her away into the tiniest particles—sparkling, red, golden, digital, real. Gone.
Juno didn't cry. Not this time.
But she bowed her head.
---
The air shimmered again.
System sounds returned like vultures.
She stood.
Around her, the forest glitched.
Then—movement.
From the treeline, dozens of herself emerged.
Different Juno's. Different clothes. Injured. Armored. Innocent. Ruthless. Their varieties are seemingly endless.
One with her eyes gouged out. One glowing with holy light. One wearing a mask of her own skull. All sprinting toward her, screaming her name—or some version of it.
"JUNO!"
Time had not healed her.
It had duplicated her.
Cloned the scars. Pressed them into flesh across timelines that never agreed on who she should've been.
And yet.
She didn't run.
She simply whispered:
"Now I understand why all of you wants to kill me to make things right for your timelines."
To herself.
To all of them.
Then she drew the Chronosword again.