Volume 4—Chapter 112: The Battle of Concept (1)
Time is the unseen sovereign of all things.
The quiet force that turns potential into memory and motion into meaning. Without Time, Creation would remain suspended as an unfulfilled possibility. Reality would be nothing more than a stage with no performance. Fate would be a pattern sketched but never traced.
It is Time that allows growth and decay. Learning and consequence. It creates distance between cause and effect, and within that distance, choice is born. Through its steady passage, moments gain weight. What passes can matter. What lingers can wound. What arrives can change everything.
Time is not merely a measure.
It is proof that existence is alive.
But if Time were to flow sideways instead of forward, it would no longer carry moments in a single line. It would unfold them outward, like a horizon expanding in every direction. Cause would not lead to effect. They would exist beside one another.
The past would not sit behind. The future would not wait ahead.
They would stand adjacent.
Reachable not by waiting, but by awareness.
And that was precisely what was happening.
Inside a green sphere suspended in the ruins of Times Square.
The world beyond the barrier continued to burn. But within the sphere, something had shifted. The air felt layered, as if multiple realities occupied the same space without merging.
Aria stood at its centre, her face calm, unreadable.
In her grasp was Caroline, unconscious, suspended in the air by invisible force. A faint green light radiated from Caroline’s body. Around her formed a translucent violet shell.
Aria released her.
Caroline’s body was hurled far across the sphere, landing near the inner boundary where she remained suspended, untouched by the turbulence inside.
Emilia watched carefully.
“What a cunning trick,” she said.
Her Authority over creation strained against the space, but nothing responded. The constructs she tried to weave unravelled before completion, not destroyed, but denied progression.
“Well… my power isn’t the only one constrained,” Emilia continued, narrowing her eyes. “You’re affected too.”
“Wrong,” Aria replied.
As Time flowed sideways, every possibility existed at once. Not consecutively, but side by side.
Along the inner surface of the green sphere, reflections shimmered like an endless hall of mirrors. At times, Times Square lay in total ruin, swallowed by violet fractures. In others, it remained intact, untouched by disaster. All instances were present.
None was advancing.
“Your power cannot manifest,” Aria said quietly.
Then she vanished.
No delay. No transition.
She appeared directly in front of Emilia.
“…But mine,” she continued, “is a possibility that can occur without requiring time to move forward.”
Her hand moved.
Not faster than before.
Not slower.
Simply choosing an outcome that already existed beside the current one.
Inside the sideways flow, action did not wait for sequence.
It selected.
Inside the green sphere, moments did not chase one another. They stood shoulder to shoulder, layered like transparent sheets occupying the same space. Every strike existed beside the possibility of it missing. Every wound existed beside the version where it never landed.
Aria moved first.
Or rather, she chose the version where she had already moved.
She appeared behind Emilia, her hand cutting through the air. The impact landed before the motion could be registered. Emilia’s body bent forward as the force connected, cracks of pressure radiating outward across the mirrored boundary.
Golden sigils bloomed around Emilia’s frame, structures forming from nothing, blades, chains, shields, entire constructs birthed in a breath. But they did not complete. Each creation halted halfway between emergence and realisation, suspended in adjacency.
Aria stepped through one unfinished blade as if it were mist.
“You cannot build forward,” Aria said calmly. “There is no forward.”
Emilia wiped blood from the corner of her lip, eyes sharp despite the pressure crushing around her.
“You’re wrong,” she replied.
She thrust her hand toward the edge of the sphere, toward where Caroline lay suspended in violet containment. If she could reach her, if she could disrupt the fragment acting as anchor, the sideways expansion would collapse back into sequence.
Aria’s gaze flickered.
In the mirrored boundary, infinite versions of Emilia ran toward Caroline. Infinite versions failed. Infinite versions succeeded.
Aria stepped again.
She intercepted the version that mattered.
Her strike connected with Emilia’s ribs, sending a shock through every adjacent possibility at once. The mirrored surfaces rippled violently.
Emilia staggered but did not fall.
Creation flared brighter around her, unstable now. Veins of gold spread across her skin like fractures beneath glass.
“You think I can’t act here?” Emilia’s voice dropped.”
Her Authority surged.
For a split second, something impossible occurred.
A construct is completed.
Not because time moved forward, but because Emilia forced it to. She overlaid her Authority on top of the existing structure of the sphere, attempting to overwrite the rule itself.
Blood ran from her nose immediately.
Her left arm trembled, fingers locking unnaturally as nerves misfired under the strain.
Overwriting another Authority came at a cost.
Aria watched her without expression.
“You’re sacrificing your own vessel,” Said Aria.
Emilia laughed weakly. “If I can reach her, it’s worth it.”
A spear of condensed creation fully manifested in her grasp. She hurled it past Aria, aiming not at her opponent, but at Caroline.
The spear tore through layers of sideways moments, forcing a narrow corridor of forward motion in its wake. The green sphere shuddered violently. Hairline fractures formed along its surface.
Caroline’s body twitched within the violet barrier.
Aria moved.
She did not chase the spear.
She stepped into the possibility where it had already been deflected.
Her hand closed around the shaft mid-flight. Violet light surged from her palm, dissolving the construct back into incomplete thought.
The corridor collapsed.
Emilia dropped to one knee.
Her breathing grew uneven. One eye flickered faintly, vision destabilising as her body struggled to sustain the overwrite.
“You can act,” Aria said quietly. “But every time you force progression, your body pays the price.”
Emilia looked up, fury and determination burning through the pain.
Behind Aria, Caroline remained suspended, green light pulsing faintly, the anchor of the sideways expanse.
Emilia pushed herself upright again, ignoring the numbness creeping into her limbs.
If she could not outpace Reality in possibility, then she would burn through her vessel until one outcome pierced through.
And this time, she did not aim at Aria.
She aimed at the sphere itself.
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