Amara woke up early to watch the sunrise, and he noticed that Sebal and Elu were still asleep, making loud sounds and in a bad mood when he tried to wake either of them up. So he decided to sit and wait; the wind sang from a distance, a beautiful melody causing a shimmer in the air itself. Amara could see the flow of these siren sounds as clear as the embers of a flame for one reason or another.
He decided to flow them to their point of origin, tracing them through the morning sky. He found himself at a lake filled with bones. There he saw a young lady with ghostly white hair and skin as pale as the dead she was; however, not dead, Amara thought to himself, for he could tell her flow of time had not yet ended. She began to sing lower and lower. The melody is increasingly more compulsive and trance-inducing.
"Come to me, come to me," she said. Amara walked toward her, and the pale lady continued to sing. He stood at the edge of the lake and uttered, "You can call me Amara. Do you have a name? ". The pale lady changed the siren sound and moved closer to this strange boy who seemed to act outside of the will of the siren song. "No matter, I will consume your very life force," she said. She began pulling out Amara's life force to no avail. Something was wrong. Why was it not working? She thought to herself. Suddenly, time froze. The space in from of Amara cracked as if it was glass.
"AMARANTHINE!" a female voice rushed out of the crack. Again, Amara felt a familiar chill, but this time, his whole body was brought to its knees, and a surging pain shot through his body like lightning. "You will not ignore me, Amaranthine, this is the power of ...., and you will only use it when... I will lock it at the very edge of your pathetic mortal body's timeline; I will await your return, dear brother". As sudden as the moment arrived, it was gone.
Time unfroze, and like the screeching sounds on a chalkboard with the intensity of a sharp point, Amara felt excruciating pain, his very first instance of pain made worse by his very life force being drained out of him. He screamed in agony just when he thought all hope was lost. Amara heard Sebal's voice calling out for him in the distance. He mustered all the strength he had in his tiny body and shouted, "SEBAL..... HELP!!". Amara passed out as his life continued to drain out of his body. "You are a strong little one. Not many can last this long. Your friend can not help you; after I take your soul, I will have his," she thought to herself. A gust of wind sharp as a blade burst through the whispering trees flew towards the pale lady's head to which she dodged interrupting the completion of the siren song.
Sebal came riding on the back of his black sheep with two tails the size of a bull. "I told you to pee before we left. Elu, right now, Amara needs our help," Sebal said to his black sheep. Elu became pitch black, with shadows flowing out of her body. Darkness engulfed the sky around Sebal were in a single instance suddenly appearing at Amara's location. He picked him up and walked back towards Elu. A quiver in her eyes, the pale lady submerges to resurface with her trident in hand. She begins a different melody, one echoing the 'sounds of war.' She remains cautious and alert. Sebal puts Amara down near Elu, she licks Amara, and he slowly wakes up, barely conscious; he asks what happened, upon sensing the tension in the air, he tries to stand up.
Sebal asked Amara if he was okay, to which Amara replied "I think so", he could tell that Amara was different somehow, so almost as if out of his own curiosity, he stood him up and said, "Well, if you are okay, you won't mind finishing your own fights now would you? " with a slightly condescending tone almost as if to make fun of him. "Wait, I can't. I am not even sure what to do to win," said Amara. Sebal laughed and took a look at the pale lady and said "If you can win against this kid, I will allow you to live another day". Amara tried to muster any strength within him with fear and shock on his face, but he could not feel what was once so ingrained in his very being. He turned to Sebal with a look that could only be described as 'This old man is going to get me killed.'
Sebal suddenly picked Amara up by his long coat and threw him towards the pale lady with only a few words of advice "Try not to die."
Amara shouted, "Are you trying to kill me, you crazy old man" as he ran to try to avoid the attacks, the pale lady had begun to save her life in her desperation. Her attacks were predictable enough even for the current Amara, so Sebal was not entirely concerned. However, even with the flailing of her trident, the pale lady managed to land a few direct hits on Amara. she was further weakening his already weakened body. Struggling to stand up, Amara looks back towards Sebal and notices an intense Aura coming from Sebal and Elu. Words need not explain the meaning of this. He now realizes the reason he is not yet dead is because of them; the sheer terror he then saw in the eyes of the pale lady cemented that before the fight began, it was won.
This singular thought brought his mind back to the halls of time, watching the grains of sands in the hourglass fall one by one until the hourglass reset to do it all over again, remembering that the beginning is also the end. He heard the echo of Damocles's voice, "I will lock it at the very edge of your pathetic mortal body's timeline" yes, this was the key. His power was not gone. It was simply at the end and the beginning. A burst of energy escaped his little body, then compressed into the sigil of Chronos, marking his chest near the heart. "Fast forward," he said with an eerily calm. His little body began to age growing into the oversized coat he had on to that of an adult. "Is this the end?... It seems the pale lady has truly taken a part of my timeline. No matter, I will end this quickly." Amara thought to himself.
The figure that all who bore witness saw was not that of man as Amara had seen. No, this was something else entirely what looked like entire galaxies in his eyes alone, a cold akin to dead space between life and death itself held at bay by the flesh of his mortal body. 'The gods must have trapped him,' Sebal thought to himself, for a prison to contain one such as this can not be easy to create a mortal body yet seems a reasonable attempt.