The world was broken, its fabric torn by the weight of time itself.
It had been years since the Chrono Protocol first appeared. A system that governed time—its origins shrouded in mystery. No one knew where it had come from or what its true purpose was, but one thing was certain: it had changed everything.
Time anomalies, distortions, and strange events became part of the everyday. Clocks ticked out of sync, the sun rising in strange patterns, and moments in time, once thought to be fixed, began to warp and blur. Some days felt longer than others, and some minutes seemed to stretch on endlessly. Time itself seemed to have lost its order, its rhythm.
For the most part, people adapted. They learned to live with it. The world had become a place of constant uncertainty, where the laws of time no longer held sway over their lives. Strange things happened—sometimes an object would freeze in place, a person might vanish for a few seconds only to reappear, or a memory might be rewound or erased entirely. But to most, these anomalies had simply become another part of life. Something to tolerate. Something to ignore.
It was a world where time was no longer a predictable force, but a volatile, shifting thing. And though the Chrono Protocol was the root of this disorder, its true nature remained a mystery. Why it had been activated, or who had set it in motion, was something no one had answers to.
Some believed it was a curse. Others, a gift. But for most, the Chrono Protocol was just part of the world they lived in, like a broken clock ticking away in the background.
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Elior was not the kind of person people remembered. At 19, he was unremarkable in almost every way. Standing at a mere 5'8", his frame was slender, his shoulders slumped, as if weighed down by a burden he couldn't name. His clothes, threadbare and patched, hung loosely around him, the fabric faded from years of use. His hair, dark and unkempt, fell in uneven strands over his forehead, matching the tired, dull expression on his face. His eyes, a pale brown, lacked any spark of vitality. They were the kind of eyes that looked like they had seen too much of life's disappointments and hadn't found a reason to look beyond them.
There was no force in his posture, no energy to the way he carried himself. He moved like someone who had long ago given up trying to make a mark on the world. His hands were rough from years of repairing broken gadgets and old machines in the cluttered shop he worked at. His fingers were nimble enough to handle delicate pieces, yet they were always stained with grease and oil—symbols of a life spent fixing things that had little meaning.
Elior's life was simple, monotonous. He was just a low-ranking assistant in a small, decrepit repair shop at the edge of the city, its walls cracking and peeling with age, much like the buildings around it. The city itself was a shadow of what it had once been, a relic of a forgotten empire, now a crumbling ruin on the outskirts of what was left of civilization. In the quiet hours of the day, the shop became a sanctuary for him, a place where he could retreat into the familiar, mind-numbing task of mending broken tools and forgotten trinkets.
His customers were few, the work unimportant, and the pay barely enough to keep him from starving. He had no family—no one to speak of, really. Just the shop, the dim light of his workspace, and the ever-present ticking of time, which seemed to move ever faster in this broken world. He had no particular skills, no remarkable talent. His stats were low, his physical strength weak, and his mental fortitude even more fragile. There were days when it felt like he was just waiting for something—anything—that would give his life purpose. Yet no matter how many hours he spent in the shop, no matter how many times he tried to find a way out of this dead-end existence, he always found himself right back where he started.
He had dreams, fleeting ones—dreams of becoming something more. But they were just that: dreams. He didn't know where to start, how to begin, or what path to take. He often wondered if he would ever find the courage to change his life or if he would remain forever trapped in the stagnation of his own mediocrity.
It was a life that felt like it had no direction, no clear meaning. A life that passed by in a blur of monotonous hours.
And so, as the day finally came to a close, Elior locked the door to the shop, letting out a quiet sigh as he turned the key. The city stretched out before him, a gray and decaying sprawl, its streets quiet except for the distant murmur of the remaining residents. He could feel the weight of another day slipping away, and for a moment, he considered heading back to his tiny apartment, where he could sink into his bed and forget the world for a few hours.
As he stepped into the street, the cool air of the evening hit his face, sending a shiver down his spine. But as his foot met the cracked pavement, something… unusual happened.
Everything around him seemed to slow. The chatter of distant voices, the hum of machinery, even the movement of the people on the streets—it all paused, as if the world had suddenly frozen in time. A moment of utter stillness. He stopped in his tracks, his heart skipping a beat, his breath catching in his chest. For a split second, he was alone in the world. Everything—everything around him—stopped.
His hand instinctively reached out toward a lamppost, its light now unmoving in mid-air. He could see the faint outline of a car, its wheels suspended in the air, its passengers frozen in place. His breath, ragged and uncertain, echoed in the stillness, but there was no other sound. No wind, no rustling of leaves. Just… silence.
He blinked, once, twice, then the world snapped back into motion, as though nothing had happened. The people resumed walking, the car's wheels began to turn again, and the sounds of the street returned, louder than before.
Elior stood there for a moment, still, his mind racing to comprehend what had just occurred. Had it been a glitch? A hallucination? It didn't make sense. His hands trembled slightly, and his breath came out in shallow gasps as he scanned his surroundings. Everything appeared normal. The street was crowded with people, the shops were lit up, the sounds of the city filled the air once again.
But a feeling—a strange pull—lingered in him. Something about that moment, that brief instant where everything had come to a halt, felt… wrong, as though the rules of time itself had been twisted, if only for a heartbeat.
He shook his head, trying to brush the sensation away. "It's nothing," he muttered to himself. "Just a random glitch."
But even as he walked away, heading toward his apartment in the distance, he couldn't shake the feeling that what he had experienced was more than just an anomaly.
And just as he rounded a corner, his eyes caught a glimpse of something—something high above the city, hovering in the twilight sky. A symbol. A strange, intricate sigil that resembled the gears of an ancient clock, suspended in the air. It seemed to pulse with an unnatural glow, flickering as if it were made of pure time itself.
Elior froze in place. The sigil seemed to pull at him, drawing his gaze toward it, but in the blink of an eye, it was gone—vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. The streets returned to normal, the lights flickering, the city bustling around him. He couldn't explain it. He didn't know what it meant. But something deep inside him—something he couldn't name—whispered that it was important.
That it was a sign. A sign he was meant to see.
He took a shaky breath and continued on his way, the sensation of time stretching unnaturally lingering in his chest. His curiosity was piqued. He couldn't understand what was happening, but it was a feeling he couldn't ignore. Something was changing. Something had changed.