Chapter 1.

Offline.

I have a question for you…

¿Who was the person who saved you when you were going through your worst moment…?

Every choice has a cost; not choosing is still choosing; staying safe costs growth; taking risks costs your comfort, however, doing nothing also costs your dreams, and life will take something from you no matter what…

Your time…

Your energy…

Your courage…

You will even pay the pain of staying the same or the pain of changing; the price of comfort or perhaps the price of growth; others will charge the price of safety or perhaps the price of trying; You can't avoid paying these prices...

But you can choose why you pay for what matters enough to you to risk, for what's worth your fear, your effort, your heart, so if you have to pay, remember this well anyway: pay for something that matters to you, pay for the life you want, not the one you're settling for. Make every sacrifice count, even those that have left you with a heart disconnected from reality, it's about your choices...

And make them matter, but above all, make your damn pain worth something, because if you're going to pay a price, no matter what, you have to make sure it buys you something you really want, something that truly benefits you, no matter if it's been 10, 15, or 20 years, because all your mistakes are still present, and someone remembers them daily and examines them to know where to bring you down; It doesn't really matter that I don't recognize my human side now...

And even though this means contradicting my own words, there's a reason my last name sounds like time, Tempus, but since that last confrontation that petrified my body and locked me within the barriers of my own mind with that alter ego of the Defiler, things have changed, I'm no longer the same...

I look in the mirror and don't recognize myself. I know very well that Caesar had to make sacrifices that were initially impossible for him to fulfill. However, he did it because he wanted us to live, to return to solid ground with a conscious and an awakened body. 

But in the process, I simply lost myself. That which made me powerful and indestructible is no longer within me; it has been extracted from the roots, and the recovery has been slow, painful, overwhelming...

Ten years to feel that this damned mortal body is nothing more than garbage that can die and feel pain. However, the boys have grown and now look like teenagers entering adulthood. They haven't lost anything. They still maintain the perfect balance…

Maybe, it was because they grew from the womb with that genetic alteration that I myself implanted, but with each waning quarter moon, I can only watch them from the balcony as they emerge transformed in search of something to hunt, while I'm here alone, sitting watching as life stops seeming interesting, because I feel like a part of me, maybe a very important one, has died.

 I can't be the Defiler again. I don't have the courage to bring him back. I, Patrick Tempus, left the Defiler trapped that day they woke me back to life.

I feel like I'm trapped in time. There are so many people around me, but I'm alone. I simply have no body, no senses. My feelings are buried, because that place where I saw the Desecrator head-on was hell. 

There was no escape, no heaven, just a mortal body trying to reintegrate its immortality. But his Machiavellian laughter, mocking me, made me realize that the Desecrator had his own personality, while I, I am a meat machine…

I've hated everyone around me for these ten long years, especially my sister, because she will live forever, but ¿what about me? I have to rot in this weak body that has forgotten the greatness that once lived alongside the Desecrator.