The clearing was quiet now. Birds gone. Wind still. The other students had vanished into the trees. Only the broken boy remained—body twitching, throat raw, blood streaked across his face like war paint. Damon lay there, eyes wide open, black as void.
And then…
From beneath the tangled leaves, the forgotten watch stirred.
It hadn't been touched.
But it moved.
Like yanked by an invisible thread, it lifted—slowly at first—then with speed. Moss and dust scattered beneath it as if repelled by force. It spun once midair, like weighing the wind, then shot toward Damon's motionless body.
It moved like a predator.
Like it knew where it belonged.
The watch slammed into his wrist with a metallic snap, right beside the standard Chronowatch already locked around his arm. Instead of rejecting the clash, it attached itself—straps unfurling like fingers—and held.
A split-second later, its body began to change.
The metal softened, shimmered, turned liquid—then sunk beneath his skin. Tendrils of molten grey slid into his veins, leaving no wound, no scar. Just silence. But on his other watch, the numbers—once counting slowly—flared to life.
10 years. 3 months. 2 weeks. 2 days. 5 hours. 12 minutes. 30 seconds.
Then—
29… 28… 27…
They weren't ticking down.
They were being devoured.
10… 7… 4… 2…
The digits hit zero. The entire watch blinked, glitched, then froze.
All zeroes.
Every number gone.
Gone.
And etched into the cracked glass face of the now-vanished band, if someone had looked close enough, was a single jagged letter—scratched deep into the metal strap, like a message carved in anger or love.
L.
*
[Synchronization complete]
[Ding!
You have awakened and inherited a Chrono Code]
[Ding!
The inherited code's LifeTime has hit Zero.
Your LifeTime has hit Zero]
[Warning! You are being rejected by the Echo Current.
Synchronization unstable.
You are dying!]
But then—
[Ding!
You have gained five minutes and zero seconds!]
His eyes flared—color bleeding into them for the first time. A deep steel grey, almost silver under the light, sharp and cold. Life. Not much, but it was there. Just enough to stop him from fading.
Damon lay still, body broken, lungs shivering, but his soul—somehow—still holding on.
He didn't understand.
Not fully.
Not yet.
All he knew was that something had crashed into him in that black void. A soul—or a monster wearing the shape of one. It didn't speak. It just entered. Like fire forced into a glass bottle. And then he woke up here. Screaming. Dying. Eyes watching him. Then leaving him.
Those students—they didn't help. They backed away. They ran. No explanation.
No hand reached out.
Just silence.
And yet… he didn't die.
He was supposed to. He'd felt it. The countdown had burned through him like acid. His LifeTime—whatever that meant—had dropped from ten full years to zero in mere seconds the moment that cracked watch merged with him. Ten years, gone. Eaten from the inside.
And then… just two seconds left.
Two seconds.
That's what he had when everything should've ended.
But it didn't.
Instead… he got five more minutes.
Not much. Barely anything.
But why?
Why now? Why him? What was happening?
Damon's throat was raw. His bones felt like broken glass. He couldn't lift his arms. Could barely blink. But he could think. Just barely.
And something inside whispered the answer—new memories.
This world runs on time.
Not money. Not just power and bloodlines—that only mattered if you had time!
Time.
Here, every human was born with a countdown. A LifeTime. The second it hit zero—your heart stopped. Your soul unraveled. Your body dropped. It didn't matter if you were rich, royal, innocent, or strong.
Everyone was dying.
Just at different speeds.
And so everyone fought.
They hunted for seconds. Bartered for days. Sold their limbs for hours. Some begged. Some stole. Some murdered. The world didn't care how you lived, as long as your clock kept ticking.
Then there were Chrono Codes—the powers that bent time and fate—only awakened in the few. Those blessed, or cursed—for all it mattered—by the Echo Current. But even that wasn't enough.
To survive, you needed more than awakening.
You needed recognition.
From the Archivist—the invisible force that marked your place in this timeline. Once marked, you could fight beasts. Absorb their time. Sell it. Store it. Use it.
What did it really mean to be Awakened?
It meant you had access to the only currency that mattered in this world—LifeTime.
In this world, time wasn't just ticking. It was traded. Stored. Hoarded. Measured down to the last breath.
And the Awakened had the right to truly own it.
When you were Awakened—recognized by the Echo Current and noted in the annals of the Archivist—your body became a vessel for true time exchange. You could collect LifeTime from defeated beasts, absorb it from relics, trade it in Time Markets, even store it in Chrono Banks. You were part of the system.
Unawakened? You couldn't touch it. Couldn't absorb it like they wished.
You had your preset countdown and that was it. Once it hit zero—you were gone unless otherwise...
But the Awakened?
They could turn LifeTime into wealth.
Into years of life.
Into power.
The higher your Chrono Rank, the more LifeTime you could hold. The richer you were considered. Nobles weren't born—they were measured by how much LifeTime they'd gathered, inherited, or stolen. There were people walking the earth with hundreds of years wrapped around their wrists like trophies. Some never aged. Some had enough time stored to survive a dozen deaths.
You could rise.
Being an awakened meant possibility to endless access to LifeTime and to immortality.
And yes, this world had academies, warriors, cities that hovered on floating timelines. They had swords made from crystallized seconds, rifles that fired compressed hours, and vaults that could store a hundred years in silver cubes. There were time-rich nobles, mercenaries, and nearly godlike powerhouses who hadn't aged in a century.
But underneath it all—everything depended on one thing.
Time.
And Damon Vale, who woke up with two seconds left… had just been given five minutes.
He sat up slowly—like a corpse remembering how to move.
Every muscle screamed. Bones ached like they'd been reforged in a furnace. His lungs pulled in air like it was a foreign substance, sharp and cold. But beneath the pain, beneath the trembling… something twitched.
Inside him.
Like a pulse that wasn't his.
Something coiled. Watching. Waiting.
He clenched his fists—bloodied, shaking—and looked around, really looked at the forest for the first time. The colors were off. The trees too still. The light too pale. It felt like time wasn't just passing here—it was watching.
And he knew.
This wasn't the world he came from.
This was a new reality. And he didn't belong in it.
At least that's what he thought until...