Isaac
It was cold. White puffs of air slipped from my mouth like smoke. The chill bit at my skin, and the snow was thick, swallowing my boots halfway up. Silence draped the world—too much silence. The kind that only comes after a storm.
I looked up. Snowflakes drifted from the sky, glittering like diamonds. It was beautiful, almost serene.
Where was I?
I stood on a road. The interstate. That interstate. The place where everything had gone wrong. My parents. The accident. Where the snowstorm had swallowed their lives, leaving only wreckage in its wake, but now, there was no wreckage. No people. Just an empty road buried under snow and vehicles scattered like broken toys.
The cars were in decay, twisted, and rotting. Black vines clung to them like spiderwebs weaving through broken windows and shattered metal.
I swallowed hard. My boots crunched through the frozen ice as I ran toward where my parents had been. The closer I got, a dull ache spread through my ribs, squeezing until it hurt to breathe. But when I reached the car… inside, there was nothing. No bodies. No blood. Just empty stillness.
I reached out and touched the cold surface. The instant my fingers brushed against it, the car crumbled, turning into dust and ash. Gone, just like that.
Am I dead too?
The thought crept in before I could shove it away. Maybe this was it. Maybe I’d finally joined them in whatever limbo we were all trapped in. Maybe that’s why everything was so still, so quiet, like even death had grown tired of the noise.
Then I heard a faint rustle. My heart leaped into my throat, and I spun around, eyes searching. Something moved near the trees by the road. Small. Quick. Darting in the shadows.
“Will?” I called, my voice cracking in the frozen air. “Will, is that you?”
A giggle. A child’s laugh echoed back laugh echoed back. It bounced off the trees, the wrecked cars, the emptiness. I couldn’t tell where it came from—everywhere, nowhere.
“Will!” I shouted again, feet struggling against the deep snow as I chased the sound. “Where are you?”
I could not lose him too.
I promised my sister I’d take care of him. I told her I’d raise him like my own, that I wouldn’t let anything happen to him.
My feet slid over the icy pavement as I jumped the guardrail. I sprinted toward the forest, but no matter how hard I ran, the trees didn’t get any closer.
This was a dream.
My legs kept moving, but the distance stayed the same. Then, all at once, I was stumbling into the pines as if time had skipped ahead. My body jerked forward, almost sending me to the ground. But I kept running, the snow dragging me down. Still, I didn’t stop.
That’s when I saw him—a small figure up ahead, his back to me.
“Will!” I panted, lunging forward. I caught hold of him, pulling him into my arms, relief flooding me—until I turned him around.
It wasn’t Will.
The boy in my arms had brown hair, not black. His sun-kissed and olive skin didn’t match Will’s pale complexion. His eyes—they weren’t Will’s hazel eyes. They stared at me wide and glowing. His irises were vast, like galaxies in an endless night sky with stars and nebulae swirling in the dark depths.
“Fuck.” I whispered, stepping back, still holding him, unable to tear my gaze away. I was frozen. Mesmerized.
The boy tilted his head, his features eerily calm, almost curious. Slowly, he turned his head and looked behind him. I followed his gaze, letting go of his arm.
San Francisco. Or what was left of it?
Black smoke billowed into the sky, twisting and devouring the skyline. Flames licked at buildings, reducing them to ash. Monsters—creatures straight out of hell—roamed the streets. People ran, screaming. Some fought back, hands glowing with strange powers, but it was chaos. Too much.
I stumbled backward.
What the fuck I was seeing?
Before I could process it, the boy spoke. His voice didn’t match his small frame—it was low, steady, and far too old. “You think you can stop him.”
I blinked in confusion, staring at him. “What? Stop who?”
“Aldragoth.”
The name hit me like a punch. My body trembled, my mind blank. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. My mouth felt like it was filled with ice, freezing any words I wanted to say.
Stop him? How? How could I stop something like that? I was a nobody. A peasant who struggled to pay the bills, living from his unrequited love’s charity. It was stupid. Absurd. Ridiculous.
All I wanted—all I could think about—was finding Will. If these were the final days, I needed to be with him. That’s all that mattered. Not Aldragoth. Not gods. Not whatever nightmare the world had become.
The boy tilted his head again. His galaxy-filled eyes narrowed as if he were seeing right through me. “Hmm, interesting,” he murmured. “I thought my vestige would reach someone with a stronger soul. I’m curious now why they chose you.”
I shook my head, trying to clear the fog in my brain. "Chose me? What the hell are you talking about?"
He didn’t answer right away. Just looked at me with those unsettling eyes. Then, slowly, he smiled. Cold. Knowing. A smile that sent a chill down my spine.
“I knew Aldragoth would make the mistake of opening the gates of heaven and giving humanity the vestige of the mercy gods. But what he doesn’t understand is that a human body cannot contain the power of the gods alone. It will tear them apart, destabilizing them from the inside out. If he believes awakening people with such immense power is the endgame, he’s mistaken.”
He touched his chin, murmuring as if deep in thought. “At least Aphrodite helped me do something to counteract that problem.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, but he ignored me.
“Aldragoth doesn’t want to end humanity, not at the end of the seven days. That was my cycle, my design. His goal is to make those with power his puppets, bending them to his will. He doesn’t care about a final judgment—only control.”
My mouth opened, but no words came out. I was speechless.
“Do you think a god born from humans will stop at just seven days?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. “No. He won’t. That was the last thing he told me before I left an essence of myself wandering this earth. Because I knew… I knew this day would come.”
The boy’s gaze drifted back to the burning skyline. “Foolish Aldragoth. He thinks he can contain the destruction. Give humanity one last trial. But there’s no stopping what’s already begun, Isaac.”
I froze. “How the fuck do you know my name? Who the fuck… are you?”
He looked at me then, his smile widening just a fraction. His eyes flickered, and the air around us shifted. The time seemed to speed up and slow down all at once.
“Aldragoth forgets that time is like a river, looping back on itself. Every age, every moment—it all ends and begins again. Just as the sun rises after every night, so too does time reset. His mistake wasn’t giving humans power. He doesn’t understand that his power, no matter how vast, is bound by this cycle. Aldragoth can destroy as much as he likes, but he can’t stop time from resetting. The past and future are intertwined, but there’s always a breaking point. And he’s already triggered it.”
“Breaking point? What do you mean?”
“He set off the reset too early. Humans aren’t as corrupted as he thinks.”
The boy lifted his arms, and the temperature dropped sharply. The space between us rippled, and with a sudden clench of his fist, reality itself twisted. The dream warped, bending like it was being pulled into a vortex.
Out of the blue, we weren’t standing in the snow anymore, nor surrounded by the burning wreckage of San Francisco. We stood on the edge of an abyss, and I saw Will—right there in front of me—tears streaming down his face as he cried out. Someone was carrying him, clutching him tight, and running.
“Will!” I screamed, my legs moving before my mind could catch up. I tried to cross over, desperate to reach him, but the boy’s hand shot out, gripping my arm with iron strength.
In an instant, rusted, burning chains coiled around my wrist, snaking up my arm like serpents, rooting me in the spot.
“Not yet,” he said. “Your body will break. You’ll disappear into the aether of time.”
I had to reach Will.
“Let me go!” I snarled, yanking at the chains. Their grip was unyielding. I pulled harder, but the chains constricted by the second. The space was fracturing, shattering, and reforming in waves. My arms started to break apart, skin splitting, only to snap back together in searing flashes of pain.
Then, everything imploded, collapsing inward with a violent force that seemed to crush everything into itself.
The force tore through the space between us like a bomb, the blast throwing me back. The impact drove the breath from my lungs as I slammed into the ground hard. I lay there, gasping for air, my vision blurred, my body burning with the aftershock.
I could barely move. My limbs felt made of lead, every muscle screaming in protest as I tried to push myself up. But before I could even manage that, the boy was already standing over me, looming above as I lay sprawled on the ground.
I gritted my teeth. “What the hell… did you do to me?” I spat. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I would love to continue our chat… but time is running out. You need to wake up.”
He crouched down, pressing his forehead against mine. His skin was cool, and for a second, everything stilled. “I see now… why you were chosen. You don’t seek the past. You understand that time isn’t meant to be turned back, even after all you’ve lost. That’s why the vestige chose you. It found someone who doesn’t want to rewrite what’s gone, but who has the strength to move forward… and save those who remain.”
A silver spark flickered from his forehead into mine, flooding my vision with blinding white. “See you soon,” he whispered, his breath ghosting over my skin.
“Wait! You didn’t answer me! Who are you?” I screamed, struggling to rise as the light between us pulsed.
“Chronos.”
Line art of Chronos as a child 🖤 Art by me @its.forevermonday on Instagram
Comments (11)
See all