In his room, Shawn slept, his mind still anxious about his dream. Meanwhile, his grandpa sat at the far end of the bed, worried about his grandson. It had been three years since he lost his father. Grandma was sitting beside their son too at their car barrelled into an accident, ripping them away forever, Grandpa remembered. A shuffle in the sheet broke him away from his pain. He saw Shawn, twisting and turning.
"Are you ok, son?"
Shawn gave no response, clearly under stress.
"Let him be dad," his mom says, standing by the doorframe, shielding away the glaring lights from the hallway. "He just had a nightmare, that's all".
"But still, I can't just be worried, now, can I?" Grandpa spoke, just loud enough to be heard by Mom.
At that moment, Shawn jerked out of his sleep, his eyes tense, as beads of sweat traced their way down his jaw. Grandpa put a comforting arm on his leg, extending the safety of his company. Mom walked towards them as the glow of the hallway swept into Shawn's room, partially illuminating it.
"I have a solution, dear. Why don't you go to the park?" his mom says, pulling him up.
Shawn, being reluctant to move, agrees, pocketing some money to go to the store to buy some snacks.
After his purchase, Shawn goes to the park while eating a bag of chips. While walking, he spots a lady being tailed by a thug.
Not good. He thought.
Shawn, being the good guy, follows them into an alleyway. Suddenly, the lady turns around, catching the men by surprise.
"Are you done?"
The gruff stalls, stunned by the sudden question. Capturing the element of surprise, Shawn acts, jumping to the side to distract the guy. Giving no extra seconds, Shawn throws his bag of chips at him. It hits the thug in his face, the contents spilling into his features.
"AAAHHHH! MY EYES!!"
The thug screamed, blind, fighting the air around him. Shawn punches him in the jaw, following it with a hard kick to his legs. The combo lands heavy on the gruff, who crashed into cement below, knocking himself out.
"Well, at least my self-defence training came in handy," says Shawn, not even a sweat on him, satisfied with the neutralization.
"Are you alright, Ma'am?"
The lady in front of him stood observant, quite surprised at the boy's speed. Hesitantly, she parts her lips to speak, but pauses suddenly, as if sensing something. Without notice, she grabs the young lad's arm, holding onto Shawn as they run to the nearby empty park.
A little earlier, Time enters the orbit of Sert–0, having travelled from Heaven, a realm of infinite size existing outside of the infinite universe. As Time gazes upon the planet below, she has a headache unlike anything.
"UGH! MY HEAD!"
She screams into the silence of space as time itself begins to shake. It suddenly vanishes as she loses her might over the flow of time for a second, as time itself is paradoxically retired from the continuum. Then everything returns to normal, as if the preceding experience had been a brief illusion.
"Something's not right. What was that?" She composed herself and began her descent.
She enters the planet in human form as a beautiful woman who begins to search for the source of the energy spike. Still, fate works in mysterious ways, as the anomaly appears before her, not in the form of a boy with no future, but in the form of Shawn.
Meanwhile, in Heaven, as Light sleeps, he finds himself in a white void filled with black dots.
"Who is there?"
He screams, to no answer.
"I ASKED WHO'S THERE!"
"Fate was written into the 'Rules' a long time ago, you can't change it, it is by all means ABSOLUTE."
"I don't care if it is absolute, I will change it so creation won't fall."
As he says this, all the black dots vanish, and a striking pain bore into him. He screams while looking down, only to find that he was stabbed by a blade he hasn't seen before.
"Fate won't fall before you, you aren't him."
The voice says as he bleeds Light onto the sword, with reality warping around him. An intense pain in his head. He jolts awake on his bed.
"Was that …my fate?" Light says to himself, with a hint of doubt.
Time speaks to Shawn about what happened. Thanking him for his assistance, she proceeds to check his future. For reasons unknown, she could not see it.
"Hmm."
"Are you alright?" Shawn asks, concerned.
"I am quite fine". She says in reply.
But not wanting to scare him, she acts like a fortune teller instead of a god. She warned him of a terrible future ahead of him, to face much peril in the not-so-distant future. But it seemed not to be such a good thing to do as the ring that Time gained from her father, Sertorra, began to glow.
"Oh no". Time remembered. The ring will activate when a fundamental aspect of creation is disrupted. In a flash, Shadow appears behind her in a panic, looking wounded.
"Space -"
It was the only word he could say before collapsing. Time kneels to see Shadow, better, horrified by his condition. Meanwhile, the ring flies into the shocked Shawn's hands, inserting itself onto his ring finger as if it had a will of its own. Suddenly, all things turn constrained as meaning vanishes, for something happened to strip space from creation.
In Heaven Light stands emitting divine power on a scale unseen, wielding the singularity engine standing beside what seems to be the lifeless body of Space.
[To be Continued].