I was unable to move. It was a grueling battle that I had been losing for so long.

Come on, Focus. Find something. Anything! The voices were starting once more. Just as they always did. Just as they always would.

With an immense effort, I pried my eyes off the scene that was in front of me. I focused on the ground, noticing once again that I had no shadow. I focused my thoughts on how much thought had to have been put into the planning of this architecture, as the light from the glowing street lamps ricocheted off the white marble facades of the surrounding businesses, off of the polished color-coordinated cobblestones, illuminating the entire area with light.

It had been a success, I had looked away. I stared with happiness at the stone walkway under my feet.

"Cassieus run!" The most familiar voice rang out.

I was in the main city shopping district of the third rung of Cullar City. We had come here for my academy supplies, since I would be attending, after the confirmation of my receiving my grimoire. It was required to be tested for every citizen of the kingdom at the age of 15. If you were found to have an affinity with any of the many schools of mana arts, a grimoire from the Library of the Gods would be summoned to you and absorbed by your body to form a mana core, allowing you to use magic.

I had just been granted my Grimoire and we had gone right from the ascendant ceremony to the third rung to pick up the supplies on my provided list. After that was done we had decided to spend one last night together as a family, before I was about to be gone for the term and I was expecting to be collected for mandatory orientation and enrollment for Denaris Academy the next day.

"Cassieus run!"

My eyes seemed to snap back to the grave sight before me like magnets. Again, I tried to avert my gaze but found it pointless as my eyes were glued to my mother's form. She sat, frozen in time, one arm extended toward me, the other hanging on by a length of muscle that hadn't been severed completely, as she was mauled by a ten-foot-tall, two-headed reptilian humanoid. Its hideous dark red scales excreted some kind of clear slime, along it's green-tipped ridge of spikes protruding down each of its two spines, merging along its shoulders. Its large teeth dug into the flesh of her neck and shoulder. Her eyes glazed over into an opaque grayish color, but she still looked directly around me.

"Cassieus run!"

Her mouth didn't move. The entire street was bereft of even the smallest movement. But still, her pleading screams for him to escape rang out, as if coming from everywhere.

The little control I had arrested for a single moment, was gone. It now felt distant, almost as if my brain was trying to make me forget that I had accomplished such a monumental feat.

"Cass, please!"

A different voice. A familiar one, just as the first had been. Behind my mother, lay another corpse. My brain jolted as it forced me to focus on the body slightly out of my direct vision. Its face had been mutilated beyond recognition, but the yellow dress and pink hair tie told me who it was.

Ren

My little sister. The happiest and most annoying eight-year-old I had ever met and the only one I had ever tolerated outside of clan gatherings.

"Helene!"

My eyes once more, tried and failed to shoot at the other figure who had been just at the edge of my periphery. My thoughts landed on my father, a tall, overbearing man, with broad shoulders and a face well worn with both laughter and worry. Upon which sat a well-trimmed graying beard, reaching the same length as his long blond hair. Most people told me I looked exactly like him when he was my age. I didn't put much stock in that, as I had my mother's brown hair, and I was already as tall as my father, with some muscle here and there, mostly gained through the training of my clan upbringing.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I could make out the silhouette of my father standing mid-dash, frozen in place like a living statue. I could imagine the fear on his face as he rushed toward my mother. If there were any consolation to be had he had not yet seen what had become of his only daughter... of my sister.

For this was a moment stuck in time. I don't know how it happened, there had been an attack on the city out of nowhere, and then a green pulse flashed and everything suddenly stopped.

So much time had passed. I had no reasonable way to keep track accurately.

Of course, I had tried counting. I had tried counting the seconds in my head to get a better understanding of my predicament, very early on. My first couple dozen attempts I didn't even made it to one hundred thousand before I lost focus or lost my place. By the one hundred and sixty-seventh attempt I had made it to half a billion. By my one-thousand-four-hundred and fifty-third attempt, I was up to half a trillion. I was counting on the tens of thousands of years just to try and distract my mind from my never-ending hell. Suffice it to say, I quit counting after a while.

To say I stayed mentally there, would be a lie. My mind had broken multiple times over the millennia. Every time I would have my lucidity return slightly off, then it would shatter again. I had not just been counting though. Every moment spent in this torment I had been refining my core. I had spent months leading up to the ceremony studying books on mana structures and pathways within the body, learning everything I could. Though while not able to move my body I could still feel my grimoire in my core circulating mana throughout my entire body.

The beginning of the timescap had been rough, I had been in a constant state of catatonia for the better part of the first year. The next year was a gaping hole of sadness that he could even relieve by crying with his body unresponsive. After ten years I had mourned as best he could for them. After three or four centuries? Millennia? I was still empty inside but the pain slowly faded in intensity millennia after millennia and I had resolved to figure out a way out of this even if it had to be through my death. If I wasn't already dead, that is.

Through multiple circuits of different mana exercises. And I do mean multiple. Like fucking billions of circulations, before I even felt the increase in the size of my mana pathways, which left a tingling sensation around my Core. After an incomprehensible amount of time and effort, all I felt was a little tingle.

To say I was pissed would be a massive understatement. In a fit of rage, I flooded mana out of my core in a rush and for a moment, the mana made my whole body glow. Only for a brief second but it was there. A soft yellow came out of my pores like mist before immediately being yanked back into my pathways. After around a century and a half of practice, I was able to move my eyes just barely before the paralysis snapped back into place, halting any momentum and making the next attempt nearly impossible for the next several years.

With every successful attempt, it seemed like the spell, or whatever it was, got angrier at me and fought back harder, this attempt at moving my eyes by circulating mana into my ocular Pathways, was a more recent project over the last several years. Circulating it directly into my optic nerve from the ocular pathway, infusing it with my physical body rather than just metaphysical. This allowed me to empower the muscle and tissue in my body with mana reinforcing every fiber, every strand. As I had discovered, simply targeting mana to the area of my eyes did not allow for them to be able to move. I did not have the strength to move them without creating a layer of Mana to protect them from the time spell, while also empowering my actual eyes with enough Mana to push through the ever-growing, possibly aware and angry, spell in front of me. This was usually accomplished by spells but since I had not even made it to orientation to learn the simple Identify spell, there was no way for me to use any type of body-enhancing magic, other than my freeform mana. It now took almost a century between tries, however, I almost had a one hundred percent chance of it being successful for a fraction of a moment. But I was in control, something I would take and wanted more.

"Cassieus run!"

"Cass please."

"Helene!"

My family's voices sounded again reverberating through my head.

"Interesting." A new voice said from next to my right side.

What?

Instinctively, I tried and failed to turn my head to the sound of the deep voice that sounded ancient and a bit curious. Is someone here?

"Engrogeos Empire this far out? Seems like… ah yes. A broken time arrestment array, multiple localized events, and one signature is still viable. Subjective time elapsed… fifty-seven point six million local rotations. Signature most likely a remnant." A lithe, old man with lanky arms entered the corner of his vision. He had what appeared to be a silver pocket watch with whirling gears, humming with energy as they rose out of its surface creating an ethereal orb of the same construction that superimposed itself around the device. The man turned his head towards me as I got a good look at his features.

He had gray-silver hair that was tied neatly into a bun, stabbed through a black metal ringlet that held his bun in place, and was a thin, jade-green, metal hairpin securing the whole piece in place. His face held many wrinkles but none of them diminished the man's presence. His eyes held just the right amount of mirth to comfort and feel inviting. But it was what was lower on his face that caught me off guard. His whole lower jaw was a similar deep black to the metal of his hairpin, except it didn't reflect any of the ambient light, it instead seemed to absorb it. Like it was a hole in the fabric of reality, leading to an empty void.

I couldn't tell if what I was seeing was truly there. I'd hallucinated numerous times, especially in the beginning. Now it was usually the auditory ones I experienced regularly, the last words I'd heard each of my family members say before I was trapped in this Hell. Though I hadn't minded those as much anymore, just to remember what they sounded like. The unwelcome ones had been the shadows that would creep just on the edge of my vision, always a writhing mess of blurry wisps. Seemingly always coming towards me but never getting closer. The more upsetting ones were the odd few where we would be "saved" as it felt like the cavalry had arrived, standing at my back. An overwhelming sense of relief had hit me the first several times, only to be extinguished as they were always just almost there.

But this was different. The man stood out of my direct line of sight, but he was there in front of me. He was real.

I needed to show him somehow that I was still in there. I tried to cycle my mana through my core and around my pathways, hoping he would notice the mana circulating through my body at incredible speeds. If he noticed, he gave no sign of it. I had stupidly just used my eye trick for no reason, it had just been more practice. If I had saved it I could show him I was alive in here.

I cycled my mana through my body, focusing deeply on my ocular pathways. I needed this to work, but nothing had happened. This close to a previous attempt, I knew there was little chance of it succeeding but I had to give it everything I had. I grabbed every bit of mana flowing through my body and focused it into the muscles of my eye, pleading for them to move—still nothing. I had to think of something before the man disappeared leaving me here. Alone.

I felt a faint layer between my mana pathways and the physical parts of my body I was trying to infuse. Almost as if I had imagined it, suddenly it was gone. I slowly probed with my mental hands, like checking for a seam in a wall hiding a hidden doorway. It was there once more. This time I grabbed onto it, not letting this opportunity go. Surprisingly, it didn't fight back. It wrapped purple essence around my mental fingers and pulsed, showing me a pale purple path leading from my ocular pathways toward my physical body. With no other options, I followed, passing a semi-translucent barrier made of the same purple essence that made my mental protection shiver.

The trail ended at a six-pointed star that acted as the relay from my metaphysical or spiritual matrix to my flesh and bone body. This is what I would usually send mana into for my little eye trick, but the tail was leading to three separate points across the relay. With a push and an extreme effort of willpower, I sent the last dregs of Mana I had accumulated into the indicated points. Instantly, I was thrown out of my mental construct and back into my body, but I was now looking directly into the eyes of the old man, who had a raised eyebrow, never losing his smile.

"How very curious. " the old man said tapping his metal chin. "What do we think Bel?"

"I too, am curious." A deep rumbling voice came from in front of me, from exactly where the old man stood, though no one else appeared. "If he survives this, I don't see why not, an interesting case to be sure."

"Day, boy. Can you see your nose?" The man said in a jovial tone, smiling even harder.

That didn't make any sense. What about my nose? I tried looking down but of course, nothing happened. so I just kept staring at him.

"That's right, I do apologize." He said, but with the shit-eating grin plastered on his face, he still found it quite hilarious. "It seems you have by some means, manipulated your matrix into changing your physical blueprint. I would indeed like to study that in more detail. But first…" he summoned a small, silver hand mirror from a dimensional storage somewhere on his body as he raised it to my eye level so I could see myself. I was looking off to the side slightly. My eyelids were gone and some of my nose was caved in at the bridge as well as part of my brow line, so my eyes could have a clear view.

Speaking of my eyes, they were glowing the same shade of purple that I had seen in my soul space. "It was quite something to watch, akin to shapeshifters, but it looked much less like your bones were shifting and more that they just melted away. It's already started to grow back rather rapidly."

He wasn't lying. I watched slowly as my head began to return to its original shape. It was going to impair my vision as I had not just moved my eyes, as that just wasn't something I could overcome after my last attempt exhausting most of my resources. So instead, I somehow shifted the orientation of my eyeball, basically tricking my body into thinking it was always supposed to be looking in this direction. My eyes began shifting back to their original orientation, and the old man was gracious enough to follow my line of sight while still smiling.

"I believe we may have to have a chat. Let us hope you survive this"