POV: John
John Armstrong stood on the rooftop of a towering hotel in downtown Los Angeles, the cool Pacific breeze brushing against his skin. The city's usual hum of life was muted, replaced by an eerie silence that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. From this vantage point, the sprawling metropolis stretched endlessly beneath him—its highways like veins, its buildings like jagged teeth against the skyline. But beyond all that, something far more ominous lay on the horizon.
The ocean. It wasn't right.
John narrowed his eyes, his gaze fixing on the unnatural movement of the water. It churned, angry and agitated, like it was being pulled by some unseen force, and the waves were growing. Towering. Rising far beyond what was possible—far beyond anything natural.
"I sense it," EDS's voice echoed in John's mind, low and solemn. "Hiraeth has come."
John's stomach twisted. Hiraeth. The place he had only recently learned about from EDS. A continent that had been torn from its own world and violently thrust into Earth's atmosphere, bringing with it the kind of chaos and death not seen since the Great Deluge.
The water was retreating now, pulling away from the coast, the ocean draining away from the beaches like it was preparing for something monstrous.
"John," EDS's voice sharpened. "You have to move. The wave is coming."
John's heart pounded in his chest as he turned his head to the east. He could already hear the sound—a distant rumble, like a freight train roaring through the depths of the sea. And then he saw it. His breath caught in his throat.
A wall of water. Not just any wave—this was a tidal wave on a biblical scale, a colossal force of nature that swallowed the horizon. Thousands of feet tall, it surged forward, dark and relentless, blotting out the sun as it bore down on the city.
For a moment, he was frozen. The enormity of it, the sheer devastation that was about to crash down on millions of people—it was paralyzing. But then, something shifted inside him, a deep, instinctual pull. He was the Swift Knight now. He had power. He had to act.
"Time," he muttered, raising his hand.
The air shimmered around him, warping as the flow of time bent to his will. The world around him slowed, the roar of the incoming wave dropping into a low, ominous hum. But even with time slowed to a near crawl, the wave was still approaching—unstoppable, inevitable.
John knew there was no stopping it. Even with all his newfound power, this was beyond him. Beyond any human force. His mind raced. If he couldn't stop it, he had to save as many people as possible.
He moved, darting down the fire escape with lightning speed, his feet barely touching the metal steps as he descended. Within seconds, he was on the ground, the streets of Los Angeles frozen in a strange, distorted stillness. Cars were stuck mid-turn, pedestrians caught in moments of panic as they turned to see the towering wave, their faces etched with horror.
John scanned the streets, his mind working at a furious pace. He could evacuate dozens, maybe even hundreds, but the wave would kill thousands—millions. He couldn't save everyone. Not alone.
"I need help, EDS," John said, his voice tight. "What can I do? There's no way I can get everyone out in time."
EDS remained uncharacteristically unresponsive.
John gritted his teeth. His heart was pounding in his chest as he turned toward the masses of people who hadn't even realized their doom was seconds away. He could feel the weight of it all pressing down on him—every life hanging in the balance. He couldn't fail.
The first place he ran to was a nearby park, where families were frozen in place, children playing, unaware of the monstrous force approaching. He pushed himself to move faster, his time-manipulation ability allowing him to slip in and out of their reality like a ghost. He lifted a young girl in his arms, her wide eyes staring up at him in confused shock, and set her down several blocks away, in the safety of a high-rise building.
Back and forth, he moved like a blur of light, pulling people out of danger, ferrying them to safety as fast as his power would allow. His muscles screamed in protest, his body aching from the strain, but he couldn't stop. Not now.
Each time he slowed the flow of time, he could feel the tidal wave creeping closer, it's dark shadow engulfing more and more of the city.
"John," EDS's voice came again, this time softer. "You've done all you can. You have to save yourself now."
But how could he leave? How could he abandon the people still trapped in the city, the ones he hadn't been able to reach?
"I can't—"
The wave hit.
Time snapped back to its normal flow with a deafening roar as the tidal wave crashed into the coast. Buildings crumbled like sandcastles under the weight of the water. Streets flooded in seconds, cars and debris swept away like toys in a child's bathtub. The ocean surged inland, drowning the city in a matter of minutes. Everything John had tried to save was swallowed whole.
Just as the water reached him, with a growl of anger, John stepped outside the flow of time, entering the fullest extent of Chrono Drift. He'd initially accidentally entered this stage when the monster he'd been fighting attempted to pull him through the a breach. Since then, though, he'd practiced entering and exiting more times than he could count. He could move about like a ghost, but he could not interact with the physical world while in this state, and so he was stuck watching as everything he knew was decimated before his eyes. Los Angeles was gone. Or, at least, it was buried beneath an ocean that had no right to be there.
He could look at any point in time, but there was nothing he could do to stop this devastation, and his heart broke because of it.
Sensing his rage and despondency, EDS spoke softly, "John, there are enemies you must fight; enemies that are not going to stop coming because of this catastrophe. You must not hate the people of Hiraeth. They did not know this would happen. Their escape to Earth was the last, desperate hope of a dying world. There is nothing that can ease this pain, and there is nothing more you could have done to prevent it. What you must do now is deal with the things that are within your control."