Xander's lungs burned as he sprinted down the ruined office hallway, Laura close behind him. The screams of survivors echoed through the building. In the mere seconds it took Mike to get scourges attention more than half the survivors were either injured of killed. The walls were smeared with blood, bodies scattered like broken dolls. His grip tightened around the rusted metal rod he had picked up along the way—a pathetic excuse for a weapon, but better than nothing.
"Xander!" Laura shouted over the chaos. "We have to get them out of here!"
He knew she was right. These three were too much for them to handle—his earlier strategies wouldn't work anymore. They were too situational , no exposed core and no convenient artifact that levels the playing field.
And that meant he was out of options.
Laura led the remaining survivors toward the emergency stairwell. A dozen terrified people huddled together, their eyes darting in every direction. Greg, Mike, and Jared weren't among them, they were currently all that stood between the group and certain death.
"Are there any other exits?" Xander asked, scanning the area.
Laura shook her head. "Main doors are blocked. Something collapsed outside. We can only go back up the way we came."
Xander sighed , they would have to retreat , this mission was a complete failure.
As the last of the survivors filtered up the stairwell , Xander finally glanced back at Greg , Mike and Jared. It had only been half a minute at most but their bodies looked as if they had been fighting for days on end.
Watching as Jared was swallowed by that inexplicable darkness and the fragile equilibrium Mike and Greg had fought for started to crumble , Xander knew he couldn't wait any longer.
[Xander Knox]
Title : Ward of [Redacted]
Time : (1200/1200)
Strength: 7
Constitution: 10
Intelligence : 15
Agility : 10
Innate abilities: Time stop , Time skip , Temporal shift , ???
Glancing at his current stats , Xander knew he was only slightly more powerful than an average person.
Time Stop.
The battlefield lay frozen in time, a grotesque image of carnage. But the deeper he stared, the more wrong it all felt. His fingers trembled as he tightened his grip on the rusted rod. I could have stopped this. He repeated the thought, but something about it didn't sit right.
Why didn't I?
He knew his own abilities, their limits and their strengths. Twenty minutes of stopped time—an eternity in battle. He would have been able to drag each survivor out, one by one. He could have saved everyone.
His breath hitched.
He knew he had activated Time Stop.
He could feel the unnatural stillness of the world, the eerie silence that always accompanied it. But beneath that silence, there was something else.
Something was pressing down on his mind , different from the usual fatigue , there was a certain wrongness. As if something unseen had wound itself around his mind, warping it in ways he couldn't yet comprehend. Then he saw it.
His stomach twisted violently.
"That's not possible."
Nothing should be moving. Nothing but him. Yet, at the farthest corner of the ruined hallway, the lights were flickering—subtle, almost imperceptible. They danced at the edge of his vision, an inconsistency in his perfectly frozen world. It could've been a trick of his exhausted mind, but the longer he stared, the more certain he became.The lights were growing brighter.A cold sweat broke out on his skin. They were pulsing now, an unnatural rhythm that didn't belong. Each flicker seemed to draw the shadows closer, bending them toward that distant corner, warping the stillness around it.
His body locked up. His breath, his heartbeat—everything screamed at him to move, to run, to do something. But the longer he looked, the more the world around him seemed to distort, as if reality itself was unravelling. This isn't supposed to happen. A slow, crawling dread settled in his gut. Something was inside his Time Stop. Xander's face became pale , his pulse erratic - as he once more glanced at the system window.
[Warning , anomaly detected]
[Forceful termination of ability in 60 seconds]
What?
His chest tightened, panic threatening to break through, but he didn't have the luxury to process it. In 60 seconds, time would resume, and that nightmarish battlefield would claim three more bodies.
He needed a plan. Fast.
Xander's eyes darted to Greg, crumpled against the wall. Instinct took over. He rushed toward him, mind racing to piece together a crude escape.
[50 seconds]
The lights flared, brighter than before. The flickering grew more pronounced, throbbing in sync with his heartbeat, quickening as his panic surged.
Xander hoisted Greg up, muscles straining under the weight. The air grew heavier, pressing down on him from all sides. A sickening lurch twisted his gut, as if space itself was folding inward.
[40 seconds]
The flickering intensified, sharp pulses of light that felt like needles stabbing into his retinas."I'll get them to the stairwell first, from there I can only hope we're not followed."He threw Greg through the iron door and turned back toward Mike.
[30 seconds]
The lights were almost blinding now, flooding the hallway with erratic, stuttering flashes. Shadows twisted unnaturally, drawn towards that corner, bending reality around it.Shit."Mike's close enough, but Jared... that smoke... I don't even know where he is."
[20 seconds]
Xander's eyes burned, the flashing lights dancing at the edges of his vision, following him as he moved. He shoved Mike through the stairwell door and sprinted back out toward Jared.
[15 seconds]
His breath came in ragged gasps as he skidded to a stop. Jared's outline was barely visible, suspended in that thick, unnatural void. He was limp, mid-motion, yet... not. The shadows around him rippled, drawn towards the light like moths to a flame.
[10 seconds]
The light grew impossibly bright, swallowing the corner in a burning white haze. Xander's eyes watered, his head throbbing as the brightness threatened to consume everything.
He grabbed Jared's arm, the icy coldness biting into his skin, and bolted toward the stairs.
[5 seconds]
His muscles screamed, lungs burning as he closed the distance. The light pulsed wildly, each flash sending shockwaves through the frozen world.
Almost there... come on!
[Time has been forcefully resumed]