The place where Kei got teleported was like a never ending hallway, the hallway was quiet. Too quiet.
No clocks ticking.
No footsteps.
Only the faint sound of Kei's breath echoing off the metallic walls.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been walking.
Seconds felt like hours. Minutes felt like a lie.
The corridor twisted and turned, looping into itself like an impossible labyrinth. Every door he opened led to another version of the same hallway—sometimes inverted, sometimes flooded with red light, sometimes with his own voice whispering behind the walls.
Then… he heard it again.
"Don't trust the time."
The voice wasn't his. It belonged to someone—something—that had been following him since Chapter13. A low, broken whisper, like static crawling across a dead radio.
He ignored it at first.
But now it was louder.
More… real.
A light flickered above him.
Suddenly, a figure appeared at the far end of the corridor.
It had no face. No form. Just a presence.
And in its hand was a silver pocket watch, swinging slowly.
"You're out of alignment, Rei," the figure said without speaking. "Your memory is fractured. Time isn't looping. You are."
Kei froze.
He looked at his own hands. They were aging.
Then young again.
Then scarred.
His body was shifting through timelines on its own.
The prison wasn't just trapping him in time.
It was making him part of it.
"Who are you?" Kei finally asked, his voice trembling. "What is this place?"
The faceless figure tilted its head.
"I am the Warden."
A new door appeared between them, etched with the Roman numeral XX.
And above it, glowing red:
"TIME CANNOT BE KILLED, BUT IT CAN BE ERASED."
Kei's heartbeat slowed.
This wasn't an escape anymore.
It was a confrontation.