The world was silent.
A thick, suffocating darkness stretched endlessly, wrapping everything in its cold embrace. Within this void, a girl lay motionless, frozen in time.
Her name was Celestia Arclight.
She had once belonged to a lineage of powerful witches, their magic interwoven with the fabric of history itself. But in the relentless march of time, magic had been forsaken, swallowed by the tides of advancing science.
And so, Celestia's power had been sealed away.
When she closed her eyes for the last time, she had no way of knowing what lay ahead—only that she had to survive.
Then, one day, a faint mechanical hum echoed through the abandoned chamber.
—Click.
The long-dormant stasis pod unlocked, releasing a hissing cloud of frozen mist into the air. A dim red light flickered as the system's outdated warnings blared. Celestia's long slumber had ended.
Her fingers twitched.
Her breath came in ragged gasps.
Slowly, painfully, she opened her eyes.
"…Where am I?"
The voice that left her lips was barely a whisper, hoarse from centuries of sleep. Her vision wavered, adjusting to the dim glow of the failing emergency lights.
Everything was broken.
Cracked screens. Rusted walls. Vines creeping through the fractured ceiling. The once-pristine facility was nothing but a forgotten ruin.
Dread pooled in her stomach.
She stumbled forward, her trembling hands brushing against the dusty console. She pressed a flickering button, and a garbled log file displayed its last recorded message.
"The world has ended."
A chill ran down Celestia's spine.
She stepped back, heart pounding. The world… ended?
What had happened?
What had she missed while she slept?
Her trembling fingers found the control panel of the exit hatch. With a groaning creak, the heavy door slid open, revealing—
A shattered city, drenched in endless twilight.
Skyscrapers reduced to skeletal remains. The ground scorched and lifeless. The air thick with ashes that danced in the dim light of a dying sun.
This was not the world she remembered.
She stepped forward, boots crunching against debris. Then, a voice spoke.
"Yo, finally awake, huh?"
Celestia's breath hitched. She spun around—but there was no one there.
"Down here, genius."
She glanced down and saw it—a tiny glowing figure hovering just inches above the ground.
A small, winged creature with mischievous golden eyes and a cocky smirk.
"Took ya long enough. The name's Chrono. You and I? We've got some work to do."
Celestia's fingers curled into fists.
She had slept for centuries, only to awaken in a ruined future.
But if the world was already destroyed—
Then she would rewrite history itself.