(Point of View: ???)
The pale sand burned beneath my bare feet—a perfect circle of golden dust and dried blood stretching under an eternal twilight sky. One hundred opponents. One hundred echoes of the power I once wielded, distorted and diminished—one hundred Chronos users, each a fated failure, a botched attempt to mirror a True Legacy like mine. They surrounded me, a sea of tense faces and flickering temporal auras filled with hostile intent. Pathetic.
These were the remnants of Septimus's Purple Guard—the self-proclaimed custodians of Time—now reduced to desperate gladiators in an arena long forgotten in the folds of Space. Their secondary affinities formed a useless mosaic: ice spears that flared into existence and smacked against their comrades before dissolving, fireballs that sputtered and died midway, earthen walls that rose and crumbled in the blink of an eye, and gusts of wind that lost all force against my immovable barrier. They exploited Chronos to hasten their movements, create temporal replicas of themselves, even to anticipate my attacks. Poor fools—they'd already lost before the battle even began.
My own core pulsed beneath my sternum like a pure white sun of stabilized primordial power—an endless wellspring of mana. Spatium and Chronos danced in my veins, a cosmic symphony that only I could conduct. With my affinity for Light, I formed an iridescent sphere around me—not a mere passive shield, but an active membrane that deflected minor spells and alerted me to greater threats. The very air itself became my long-range weapon, my invisible projectiles. And in my hands...
Biotic!
At a thought, thick, emerald-green vines—bristling with thorns as black as midnight—sprouted from my forearms, coiling like living serpents. They were far more than mere plants; they were extensions of my will, woven with vital mana and hardened by echoes of the earth affinity I'd mastered long ago. Both arms transformed into twin whips, slicing through the air in search of flesh.
I floated a few inches above the burning sand—more out of practicality than necessity. The first group charged: a dozen figures moving with artificially accelerated speed, leaving blurry trails behind them. One, a Time-Earth specialist, tried to entrap my feet with stone hands that burst from the ground in an instant.
"Spatium!"
The space beneath me compressed as the sand folded in on itself, creating a temporary void where my feet should have been. The stone hands clutched at nothing, and before the user could even react, one of my Biotic whips crashed into his chest with the force of a battering ram, sending him flying backward like a broken, useless relic.
Another opponent, a Time-Air master, unleashed a whirlwind of accelerated wind blades. My Light barrier rippled, absorbing and dispersing most of them—though a few grazed my skin, a fleeting prick that mattered little. I countered with my own Air, not by forming blades, but by projecting a concentrated sonic shockwave—a silent pulse that raced through his accelerated temporal flow and struck him square in the head, instantly rendering him unconscious, blood trickling from his ears.
What followed was an efficient slaughter. My twin whips transformed the arena into a storm of green, thorny chaos—breaking bones and shredding temporal shields. My Air attacks were surgical, targeting weak points and shattering concentration. I used Chronos sparingly, not to pause time for long stretches (a luxury these dilettantes didn't deserve) but for brief, brutal accelerations: appearing behind a Time-Fire mage just as he cast his spell, crushing his skull with a Biotic-infused blow before he even registered my presence; or decelerating an enemy formation until they became easy targets for my sonic projectiles.
Spatium served as both shield and invisible dagger. I folded space so that attacks meant for me rebounded upon the attackers themselves. I compressed the air surrounding a temporal healer until he suffocated, and momentarily expanded the space within the guard of an accelerated warrior until his own muscles tore from the unnatural strain.
It was brutal. It was necessary. They were failed echoes—dead ends of magical evolution—an insult to the true might of Time and Space.
In less than a normal breath, the arena was clear. One hundred bodies lay broken or unconscious at my feet. The stale air reeked of temporal ozone, blood, and chlorophyll. I inhaled deeply—not out of fatigue, but out of raw, seething rage. This wasn't a victory; it was merely a tedious cleanup.
"Get out here, you damn feline!" I roared at the empty space, my voice echoing in the unnatural stillness. "I know you're here! Stop playing with your mice and show yourself!"
Laughter—incorporeal and echoing from everywhere and nowhere—resonated in my mind. And then, it appeared. Or rather, its smile appeared first, drifting in the air like a macabre neon sign: an impossibly wide curve brimming with teeth too sharp to count. Two reptilian eyes—vertical, yellow, filled with cruel, ancient amusement—materialized above the grin. The rest of its form was but a suggestion, a vague outline of striped fur that faded in and out, never fully present. The Smiling Cat. The Cosmic Trickster. The entity that had drawn me to this purgatory of fractured realities.
"So impatient, little Legacy?" its voice purred in my mind, dripping with amusement like sweet poison. "Didn't you enjoy the warm-up? They were some of the finest that Septimus could muster in this timeline."
"Silence!" I bellowed, lashing out with my Biotic whips at the floating smile. They passed through it like smoke, encountering no resistance. I launched a concentrated Air pulse—it dissipated harmlessly. I tried to fold Space around the abomination, but it was like trying to bend the void itself—a deity, or something indistinguishably close to one. My vast power was utterly insignificant in comparison.
"Tut, tut. Manners, Ummano, manners," the Cat mocked, its smile widening impossibly. "Frustration doesn't suit you—it makes you predictable."
I was about to unleash a surge of pure Chronos, attempting to freeze that blasphemy, though I knew it would be futile, when something in my periphery caught my eye.
To the right, at the edge of the arena where the shattered stands dissolved into shadow, stood a figure—small, cloaked in a dark blue hood with a tiny mask concealing its face. Just a child. Yet beneath the hood, I caught a flash—a look I knew all too well. Eyes filled with an intelligence and confusion that were hauntingly familiar. They were… my eyes. From a long time ago.
That split-second of recognition—a moment of existential shock—was all it took for my true enemy to deliver the final blow.
I don't remember feeling the impact. I don't recall seeing the attacker. All I remember is an explosion of searing, absolute pain at the back of my skull, and then… darkness. The golden sand surged toward me as my consciousness faded, my final, confused thought: Who…?