“Bold words,” he said.

The tone was calm, almost amused, like I had just said something mildly interesting instead of threatening his life.

Only then did it hit me.

His soul.

I could feel it now that I was paying attention. Not just presence, but weight. Pressure. Plasma circulating inside him in dense, controlled currents. It pressed outward into the room, subtle but unmistakable.

He had an Eidolon.

Of course he did.

And I had walked in here half-drained, thinking I was the most dangerous thing in the room.

At any moment, he could attack.

At any moment, I could die.

He turned to face me fully.

His face matched the rest of him. Broad, heavy features, cheeks thick with fat, skin stretched tight in places and loose in others. Blood stained the lower half of his apron, splattered and soaked into the fabric like it belonged there.

Then he let his plasma show.

A red aura bled out from his body, wrapping around him in a slow, controlled expansion. It wasn’t explosive like mine had been earlier. It was contained. Dense.

Much denser than mine.

If this turned into a fight, I was at a disadvantage.

Badly.

I raised my hands slightly, forcing a smile that didn’t feel real.

“Hey, hey. We can talk,” I said. “I just want one thing. Let her go.”

He didn’t respond.

The aura thickened.

More plasma seeped out, layering over what was already there. The air around him felt heavier, like standing too close to something that could collapse at any second.

That wasn’t working.

“Alright, alright,” I said quickly. “I’ll pay. How much to buy her? The one you’re cutting up.”

The words tasted wrong coming out, but I said them anyway.

Because I didn’t have a better option.

Because I didn’t know how else to get her out of this room.

He didn’t hesitate.

“Seven hundred gold,” he said, his voice low and steady.

Seven hundred.

I almost laughed.

Even if we sold the house, every piece of stock my father owned, everything we had, it wouldn’t come close.

I clenched my teeth, the frustration rising fast.

“You know she’s not an animal,” I said. “She’s still alive. Why would you do this?”

He looked at me, really looked this time.

“What is an animal to you?” he asked.

The question caught me off guard.

“What?”

“I’m asking you,” he said. “What do you consider an animal?”

I frowned, the answer obvious.

“Something that isn’t human.”

He nodded once.

“Then you’re correct. She isn’t human. So I am cutting her up.”

For a second, I just stared at him.

Trying to process that.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“She is a rare species,” he said. “A dragonite.”

The word hung in the air.

“Dragonite?”

“I fetched her and the others from the Drachenfall Range,” he continued, like he was talking about livestock. “Rare find and extremely difficult to secure. Very valuable.”

Others.

My eyes flicked around the room without meaning to.

The meat. The organs. The piles.

My stomach twisted again.

Those were her companions.

Of course they were.

Eidolons. Soul untethering. Plasma.

Different races.

I should have expected this world to have things like that.

I just hadn’t expected to find them like this.

“I can’t let you do that,” I said.

The words came out quieter now, but steadier.

Even in my old world, animals weren’t treated like this. There were methods. Rules. Ways to minimize suffering, even at the end.

This wasn’t that.

This was something else entirely.

“You can’t cut her up like that while she’s still alive,” I continued. “So I’m taking her with me.”

He tilted his head slightly, as if considering the statement.

“And how else am I supposed to cut her?” he asked.

The casualness of it made something tighten in my chest.

“You make it so she doesn’t feel it,” I said. “You don’t do this. Not like this.”

I forced myself not to look directly at her again. The image was already burned into my mind. The shape of her body, the way her eyes had moved, the tear.

She had human features. Female human features.

Too human.

“I can’t believe you call her an animal when she looks like that,” I said.

“I dare you to touch her,” he replied, his voice dropping lower.

That was the line.

I couldn’t fight him.

Not head-on.

He had more plasma. More control. More experience.

If we clashed directly, I would lose.

And I didn’t want to fight him.

Not because he didn’t deserve it.

Because I didn’t want to become someone who defaulted to it.

In my past life, I avoided conflict whenever I could. I didn’t hold grudges. I didn’t seek fights. I only stepped in when someone I cared about was involved.

Right now, that line had already been crossed.

“You won’t even see me touch her,” I said.

He frowned.

“What?”

That did sound inappropriate. Did it?

I can't believe I'm thinking of stuff like that right now.

I moved.

I sprinted forward, closing the distance between us in an instant.

“You’re pretty stupid,” he said, almost bored.

“Oh really?” I shot back.

His arm moved.

The knife came down in a clean, practiced arc, angled perfectly toward my neck. No hesitation. No warning. Just a precise motion meant to end it immediately. 

Decapitating a twelve year old? Shesh. This world has no mercy does it? Just like that witch said.

As the blade dropped, I spoke.

“Chronostatis.”

The world stopped.

Everything locked in place.

The knife froze inches from my ear, the edge hovering exactly where it would have cut through me. The red aura around him stilled, suspended like liquid caught mid-flow.

My chest burned.

Not like before.

Worse.

A deep, internal strain that made it hard to breathe even though I wasn’t moving. I had already used Kronos's time stop too much today. I could feel the cost catching up.

Three times.

That was my limit every hour.

If I pushed it again, I wasn’t sure what would happen.

I didn’t have time to think about it.

I moved to her, my hands careful despite the urgency. I grabbed a nearby cloth and wrapped it around her body as best as I could. I didn’t want to think about what it meant to move without skin, about what every shift must feel like.

“Bear with me,” I said quietly.

Her eyes were still on me.

Tick.

Tock.

I lifted her, adjusting her weight against me, and turned toward the stairs. Each step felt heavier than it should have, my body protesting the strain, the burn in my chest spreading outward.

The seconds were slipping.

I climbed.

Fast.

As fast as I could manage without losing balance.

The top of the stairs came into view just as the pressure peaked.

And then—

The world snapped back into motion.

***

A thunderous crack tore through the street behind me.

I glanced back just long enough to understand what had happened. The remains of the hut didn’t simply collapse, they burst outward, wood and stone erupting into the air as if something inside had forced its way out with violence. The shockwave carried into the nearby houses, walls buckling, roofs giving way, dust rising in a thick cloud that swallowed half the street.

That wasn’t normal.

That wasn’t just strength.

That was something else.

I had definitely made big guy angry.

I tightened my grip on the girl and ran.

My legs burned as I pushed forward, forcing speed out of a body that was already nearing its limit. She was light, about my size, which made carrying her possible, but every movement reminded me of her condition. The way her body shifted, the way she barely reacted, it stayed with me whether I wanted it to or not.

People turned as I ran past them. Some recognized me, I could see it in their faces, and they moved aside without hesitation. That helped. It gave me a clear path, at least for a moment.

My house. That was the goal. Reesay was there. She could protect me.

I turned into the last street leading home.

And stopped.

Five men stepped out from the crowd and blocked the path. Purple cloaks. Same as the one from before.

“He’s got the cargo. Stop him!”

Of course.

Are they forgetting that I'm a twelve year old?

I guess I did steal something 'valuable'.

A life with value? 

What life has value?

Can a life's value be measured?

They spread out just enough to trap me, daggers already in their hands. One of them reached back and pulled a crossbow free, loading a bolt with practiced ease.

“Surrender the girl, kid,” one of them said. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

I adjusted my hold on her, keeping her steady against my shoulder.

“She’s clearly still alive,” I said. “Why are you so fixated on butchering her?”

“Her body is extremely valuable,” another replied, his tone sharp. “Now shut your mouth and hand her over.”

That sounded wrong.

Then that word again.

Value.

Maybe she wasn’t human. Maybe the butcher had been telling the truth about her being something else, something rare, something valuable.

It didn’t matter.

Pain didn’t change based on what you called it. If something could feel, could suffer, could look at you and understand what was being done to it, then treating it like an object wasn’t justified. It was just easier.

One of them raised the crossbow and aimed directly at my head.

“I’m giving you fifteen seconds,” he said. “Drop her and run, or I put a bolt through your skull.”

Yikes.

I steadied my breathing.

Chronostatis wasn’t an option. I could feel the strain already building in my chest. Pushing it further would break something, and I didn’t know if it would be something I could recover from. That Soul Untethering book made it clear.

That left me with nothing but instinct.

“Just leave me,” the girl whispered weakly against my shoulder. Her voice was faint, barely reaching me. “I won’t live while my companions are dead. Leave me. You’ll die.”

I tightened my grip.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said quietly. “Why should you die because they did?”

“I failed to protect them,” she said. “A dragonite’s principle is pride. Our lives are one. I won’t live with that failure.”

“Five seconds,” the man said, tightening his aim.

“That’s exactly why you have to live,” I replied.

I focused.

Whatever plasma I had left surfaced, wrapping around me in a thin grey-silver aura. It wasn’t much, but it was everything I had.

The man smirked slightly.

“You went for it.”

He fired.

The bolt shot forward, clean and fast, but in that instant something in the world shifted. I didn’t just see the bolt. I understood it. The angle of release, the arc it would follow, the exact space it would occupy before it had even cleared the crossbow. It felt like the answer arrived before the question had finished being asked.

The sky above dimmed into that same grey-black tone I had seen during Chronostatis, except this time it wasn’t still. It moved, violently and unnaturally, like time itself was accelerating past everything else. The ground lagged behind it. The men in front of me slowed, their motions stretching just enough for me to see what came next.

Then everything snapped back.

Color returned all at once. The bolt was already where I had been standing.

Except I wasn’t there anymore.

I had moved without realizing it, two steps to the right, just enough to let it pass. It cut through empty air.

“What the hell?” the man muttered.

My heart was pounding hard enough to drown everything else out.

That wasn’t Chronostatis.

I hadn’t stopped time.

I had seen it before it happened.

A faint presence stirred behind me. Kronos manifested without me doing anything. 

Tick.

Tock.

“How does he have an Eidolon?” one of them said.

“Careful. He took out Alfred in one hit.”

They closed in, tightening the circle, blades raised and ready.

I was already running on fumes. My plasma reserves were barely holding, my body strained from everything I had already forced it through.

But this… this was different.

This wasn’t stopping time.

This was something else entirely.

A glimpse ahead. A bleed of what was about to happen into the present.

I observed the same thing when I awakened Kronos for the first time.

Kronos wanted me to use that ability. Perhaps I trained enough to awaken it, or this was the perfect moment to use it.
This situation did play in favour of it evolving.

Which meant it still needed something.

A keyword.

I forced myself to breathe, even as they stepped closer, even as the distance between their blades and my body shrank to something dangerously small. My mind raced through possibilities, searching for something that fit. Not stillness, not freezing, but forward motion. Seeing ahead. Reaching into what hadn’t happened yet.

“Praevisio,” I said.

Nothing.

They kept coming.

One of them raised his blade higher, preparing to strike.

“Trikāladarśin…” I tried. How do you even pronounce a word like that?

Still nothing.

My chest tightened.

Think.

Another step closer and the circle narrowed further.

“Prognosis.”

No response.

Kronos lingered behind me, I could feel it, silent but expectant.

Tick.

Tock.

Not knowledge. Not prediction.

Something simpler.

Seeing before.

Knowing before knowing.

“Prājña… how the hell do you say it again…”

My thoughts scattered under pressure as the nearest blade edged closer to my throat.

It had to be simple.

Chronostatis made sense the moment I said it.

So this had to be the same.

I closed my eyes for half a second and let everything else fall away.

One word.

That was all it needed.

“Foresight.”

The world's color shifted.

Everything slowed, not completely, but enough.

The sky churned above in that unnatural grey-black motion, racing while everything below dragged behind it. The men’s movements stretched out in front of me, their attacks unfolding in slow clarity. I could see every trajectory, every angle, every possible outcome before it happened.

Their bodies and blades left faint echoes behind them, overlapping shapes that showed where they had been and where they were about to be.

I moved.

Not fast. Not frantic.

Precise.

I stepped into the gaps between their attacks, shifting just enough for each blade to miss me by inches. One knife passed by my shoulder close enough that I felt the air move. Another cut through the space where my ribs had been a moment earlier. Another bolt from the crossbow flew past, already irrelevant because I had stepped out of its path before it truly existed.

I didn’t think.

I followed what I saw.

Each step was already decided.

Then it ended.

The ticking faded. The sky snapped back to normal, color rushing in, sound crashing over everything at once. The men staggered slightly as their attacks met nothing but air.

I was already past them.

Running.

I didn’t look back. I didn’t slow down.

My chest burned, not from running but from something deeper, something tearing through me from the inside. I coughed once, then again, and something warm filled my mouth.

Blood.

I swallowed it down and kept moving.

It felt like a fire had been lit inside my chest, spreading with every breath, every step threatening to break something further.

Still, I kept running.