Time is a grand sea which is calm, it is steady, in the norm that is.
However when people act, they call slight ripples within the grand sea, this is what is known as motion.
Motion, which is progression, and movement, and actualization.
It can be said that time is simply the concept, and Time is the layer within the sea which holds all dimensions of it.
In that sleek moment, as Cradella showed me my deaths, I realized how many ways this battle could have gone.
The limit? There was none, it would be foolish to diminish Time itself to something as simple as infinite.
Any and all possible outcomes occurred within my mind, perceiving them all.
And I exploded, not outward but inward, as if my skull folded into itself and my thoughts peeled apart like layers of wet paper.
Reality twisted into a shrieking spiral, and every direction I looked clawed back at me with another way I fell, another way I failed.
Time did not move. It pulsed, it throbbed, it opened and closed like a living mouth around me.
They screamed. Not voices from anything human, but the raw sounds of moments being ripped open.
Each possibility wailed as it passed through me, every fraction of a second turning into a cold, skeletal hand dragging itself across my spine.
They screamed because I saw them. They screamed because I touched them.
They screamed because the past and future both recoiled from me.
And now I had gone beyond my death, and saw not only all possibilities, but I saw all impossible ones as well.
The ones that should not move. The ones that should not breathe.
The ones that knew I was looking and leaned closer anyway.
It was damaging, a constant beating at my heart, and my brain, these revelations shown to me were mad.
Each one pressed itself against the inside of my skull, whispering in a language made of broken seconds and twitching minutes.
My blood felt like it was trying to escape my veins, as if it too wanted to flee from what I had witnessed.
And in this wake, I was forced to withstand it, I was forced to embrace this terrible constant flow.
The Sea of Time churned into a black, rotting whirlpool, and I could feel its current dragging at my ribs as if they were driftwood.
Every blink brought another cracked reflection of myself dying in ways that bent the rules of existence.
Every breath tasted like dust from forgotten futures.
For if I did not, it would be the end of my, myself, and my pitiful, insignificant, worth.
I broke in that moment.
[Nicholas was going to fail. How could he not? How could he pour so much into this and fail?]
I coughed, collapsing between endless possibilities. I had foreseen all of them.
[Nicholas refused that notion; it was absurd to think he, of all people, would fail.]
I coughed again, and saw myself falling into darkness. Cradella sighed at my shortcomings.
Her disappointment moved like a cold, serpentine blade along my spine.
I felt my mind splinter, fragments of thought crumbling into wet ash under the weight of futures where I begged for mercy, mercy I did not deserve.
[He was the King, the King of Sloth, and as such, any attempt, even the smallest, would have to bend to him.]
I gasped. My eyes opened, and I collapsed onto the palm of the Great Old One.
I was deranged, damaged, and yet, I was me.
Complete and whole once more. Whole, but trembling. Whole, but stained.
Whole, with echoes of countless versions of myself screaming through the cracks of my skull.
I no longer saw all possibilities. Instead, I saw none.
My mind was scraped clean, an emptied vessel, and my body returned to the center of my ripple.
And in this strange, complacent place, I found a terrifying serenity. Not comfort, but numbness.
A quiet born from terror so deep it left no space for thought.
In my hand was my sword, wrapped in an endless white cloth.
Slightly dirty with blood, sweat, and grime, but it was mine nonetheless.
Mine, like the sins I carried. Mine, like the ruin I had once brought.
"Little goat, you may drift and drift outward, claim that irrational mind that is humanity, for this world is its mother."
Her voice crawled through my bones, a slow, deliberate crawl that made marrow ache.
She began to laugh, a sound that made the world itself feel hollow, and I appeared back at the altar.
My vision blurred, lungs burning, the taste of fear clinging to the back of my throat like ash.
Gripping my sword, my body a cage of pain, I could not move.
I thought of what I had endured, and realized this was nothing compared to what the world had once endured because of me.
This pain, this unraveling, this torment was a whisper of the suffering I had wrought when I wore crowns of ruin.
The world had screamed beneath my old self far louder than I ever screamed beneath Cradella.
Time pulsed around me like a sea that smelled of iron and rot, the currents crawling over my ribs, tugging at my bones.
Whispering threats in shapes my eyes could not fully grasp.
I blinked, and for a moment, I was certain the darkness blinked back.
My thoughts no longer obeyed me.
They wandered, tangled with futures that had no right to exist, with impossible moments curling at the edges of reason.
They pressed against the inside of my skull, murmuring in a language made of broken seconds, twitching minutes, and whispers I could not fully hear.
My blood felt traitorous, as though it wanted to flee from me, from my own perception, from what I had seen.
I could feel the echoes of every death, every impossible death, brushing against my ribs like hands of ice, bending the world inward with every passing pulse.
And yet, I clung to consciousness, even as a part of me wanted to dissolve entirely.
I thought of the countless people I had wronged, the empires I had shattered with my old self, and the twisted triumphs of my ambition.
I thought of all of it and realized I deserved none of this mercy.
None of this reprieve, none of the fragile thread that still held me tethered to reality.
And in the end, I passed out.
***
I awoke in a haze.
I was not in deep, writhing pain, but my heart beat, and each pulse felt like a hammer striking the inside of my chest, cracking something fragile with every throb.
My mind floated between clarity and fever, a drifting ember refusing to extinguish.
My eyes slowly opened to a dull light.
My power was so dim I doubted the two women before me could even feel it.
Their voices reached me first, soft, frayed at the edges, fragile as cracked glass.
It was Nicole, speaking to Mirabel.
"Mirabel, I really do think he's gone too far. Forgiving me is one thing, but you say he plans to start a war?"
Mirabel sighed, placing a hand on Nicole's shoulder. Calm, but taut beneath the surface.
"Don't worry. I'll protect him, by any means necessary."
I coughed. The sound tore from my throat like brittle bone breaking.
They turned to me.
Nicole's expression twisted with pain, and she bowed her head before turning away, as though even seeing me strained her heart.
Mirabel stepped closer and grasped my hand, grounding me, anchoring me in her warmth.
"You alright? Your mind looks fragile."
Her hand rested on my forehead.
My cheeks were likely flushed, heated by fever and the residue of the trial.
I was burning from the knowledge I had seen, and the world's judgement I had endured.
"I have obtained power, Mirabel," I murmured, voice trembling between exhaustion and conviction.
"So that I may slaughter those who stand before me."