069 Conspiracy on the Works - Part 2 - Ark’s POV

  The hallway was a mess.

  Debris lay in every direction: broken tiles, splintered marble columns, and shattered chandeliers. Smoke coiled lazily through the air, catching the flickering lights like ghosts. Footsteps echoed in fragments, warped by the mayhem.

  The children…

  Each to their own, they managed to hold their ground… to an extent.

  The young Faust girl, Elena, was down for the count, collapsed against a broken pew like a discarded doll. Her hands still twitched faintly, as if trying to cast something that her battered ESP could no longer manifest.

  The Sun King’s boy—Karl, was it?—was staggering. On his last legs. His golden aura flickered around him like a dying fire, the radiance barely holding. His conjured sword of flames dragged against the stone with each breath he took.

  And the girl, Mirai, the so-called child of prophecy? Mostly unharmed. That was what puzzled me. She moved with the grace of someone blessed not with strength or training, but luck. The kind of luck that spat in the face of causality and walked away with a scratch.

  She looked at me like I was a ghost. I suppose, in a way, I was.

  My saber dripped red. I swung again, and blood scattered across the floor like paint across a canvas.

  Ivan caught the edge of it.

  He stumbled… then laughed.

  Laughed.

  The damn brute regenerated his head again. Muscle reformed like clay. Bone snapped into place. A moment later, he was on his feet once more, cracking his neck, his grin wide and teeth bloodstained.

  Just like the rumors said.

  Ivan the Immortal. One of the Deva. A relic of the dungeon era.

  He was a battle freak, a lunatic with divine endurance. The more you broke him, the more he laughed. The more he bled, the stronger he got. His body… cursed or blessed… healed faster than mine could carve it apart.

  He had every right to be called the Berserker God.

  I was getting tired of this game.

  “Time,” I whispered.

  Everything stilled.

  My ESP… Outside Time… unfolded its cold hand. The world around me froze in perfect silence, a still-life of carnage and desperation. I stepped back, staring at the stump where my arm had been moments ago.

  I turned the dial back.

  A second peeled away. Then two.

  My left arm regrew in reverse, blood slithering back into veins, nerves stitching themselves like film played backward. My saber found my grip again, and I rotated my shoulder with a snap.

  Mirai’s broken leg, courtesy of my earlier strike, mended itself too.

  Hers had not been intentional. Merely a byproduct of my healing. But now I saw the way she moved. Each time she should have fallen, some twist of fate spared her. It wasn't skill. It was the universe itself giving her a pass.

  “Daughter of luck,” I murmured. “Or something else?”

  I didn’t like uncertainties.

  I turned to Ivan again. He was still mid-lunge, paused in time, eyes wild with hunger for combat. If I allowed the moment to resume now, he’d split my skull open. Again.

  And I would have to rewind again.

  How many more loops would I burn through today?

  I sighed and stepped over Karl’s faltering body. He wasn’t my concern.

  I came here with two objectives:

  Take back my son. Mark.

  And end Ash Enoch’s life.

  Simple goals. Elegant. Clear.

  And yet…

  And yet…!

  I was no closer than when I’d started.

  In the end, it was Evelyn who truly infuriated me.

  I never thought my ex-wife had it in her.

  Evelyn always came across as soft-spoken. Gentle. The kind of woman who would cry at sad movies and shelter stray cats. But when it came to our son, she had proven time and time again she wouldn’t let go so easily. Every attempt I made to retrieve Mark ended the same way: with her one step ahead, using some legal loophole or personal contact to block me. And once he was enrolled in the ESPer Academy? That was it. My chances plummeted. I didn’t have the firepower to challenge the entire academy… not with its cadre of elite staff, and especially not with the Archon at the helm. That man was no slouch. Even I didn’t like the idea of going head-to-head with him without good reason.

  But then the Enoch contract came in.

  A request from a third party to assassinate Lady Ash Enoch. High-profile. Delicate. I brushed it off at first… too much political heat, too little reward. I had better things to do.

  And then I heard Mark would be there.

  That changed everything. I didn’t take the contract to kill Lady Enoch. I took it to retrieve my son. If the chaos of this mission provided a window, even a sliver, then it would be worth the effort.

  Now here I stood in the aftermath of that decision, knee-deep in blood and smoke.

  Ivan was frozen mid-laugh, his expression a mask of psychotic joy. The big bastard had just gotten up again… regenerated for the third time. I walked up to him through the frozen moment, raised my saber, and swung down hard. His head came off cleanly. I struck again, stabbing him in the chest for good measure. His so-called heart pulsed once under the blade. A gory mess, but he’d survived worse. The man was a cockroach. No, that wasn’t right. A cockroach wouldn’t grin at you while bleeding out.

  Time was still stopped. My ESP… Outside Time… was godly in scope but brutal in cost. Every use shaved something off me. A minute of time manipulation could tear years from a normal man’s lifespan. Fortunately, I had long since solved that problem. The Fountain of Youth had taken care of my mortality. But even so, the exertion… it ground against my will like a dull knife. Moving in frozen time required effort… like wading through concrete. I couldn’t even breathe while doing it. That was the price of walking between seconds.

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  I staggered a few paces back and allowed time to resume.

  The world shuddered forward. Ivan’s body collapsed again… but then his hand caught the severed head and flung it like a damn fastball. I barely had a second to react.

  "Again," I growled through gritted teeth.

  Time stopped once more. I twisted my head with agonizing slowness, straining every muscle to avoid the airborne skull. It hung there in front of me, teeth bared and frozen mid-snarl. When time resumed again, it clipped my neck just enough to draw blood. Warmth spilled down my throat. I pressed my fingers there and pulled them back, red and glistening.

  That lunatic had bit me. While airborne.

  “Persistent freak,” I muttered, wiping my hand on my coat.

  And then, of course, Karl attacked.

  The Sun King’s boy still had fire in him… literally. His conjured sword of flame came sweeping at my side with surprising speed. I parried it with a sidestep, but then Mirai was already moving behind me. The child of prophecy, or whatever they were calling her now.

  And somehow… still unscathed.

  It was as if fate itself bent around her.

  I twisted between them and cursed under my breath. Ivan’s body had reunited with his head and was charging again, fists glowing with heat and fury. His aura boiled around him like a battlefield sun. The bastard was laughing again. Of course he was.

  “This is getting annoying,” I muttered.

  They weren’t coordinated, but they didn’t need to be. They were relentless. I couldn’t afford to use Outside Time again… not yet. My lungs ached and my head throbbed from the last rewind. Any more, and I might collapse before I could even see Mark again.

  But I couldn’t retreat. Not now. Not when I was this close.

  I didn’t come all this way to lose to a pack of children and a blood-drunk immortal. My blade glowed faintly as I summoned the energy to strike again. This wasn’t just a fight anymore… it was a test. A reckoning. A final confrontation that would determine if all the time I had manipulated was worth the seconds it cost.

  Mark was nearby. I could feel it.

  And Evelyn… Evelyn was busy.

  I reversed time again.

  Just enough. Just to the moment when Ivan hurled his own severed head at me like some mad javelin. The world froze in place… smoke mid-rise, sparks frozen in the air like fallen stars. Every time I invoked Outside Time, I felt my insides grind as if time demanded something in return. It did. It always did. My strength. My breath. My future.

  I pushed through the weight of the still world, drew back my saber, and drove it through Ivan’s airborne skull with a grunt. It felt like slicing a stone soaked in blood. I let time resume with a breathless twitch of my will, and the skewered head arced sideways like a flung piece of trash.

  Before it could hit the ground, I stopped time again.

  The effort pressed on my lungs like I was drowning in stone. My eyes watered, my bones creaked. I bent low, gritting my teeth, and jammed the tip of my blade into both of the head’s eyes. The skull gave a sick crunch. Then, before time returned, I turned and moved toward Karl.

  His sword of conjured fire shimmered in his hands. The boy was mid-swing, oblivious. Brave, stupid, stubborn. I didn’t have time to admire it. In the frozen world, I stepped in and sliced cleanly through his arm at the shoulder. It hung for half a second, disconnected from cause and effect. When time resumed, the severed limb hit the ground in a sizzle of flame and blood.

  Karl screamed. I didn’t watch him fall.

  Something buzzed in my pocket.

  I slipped my hand in and pulled out my phone. Yes, I carried a phone. Even timewalkers needed signal reception. It was a message from Selena.

  Subject: Merrick

  He’ll be trapped here for some time. I’ll make sure of that.

  I smiled faintly. That meant Merrick was locked down… at least for now. I’d told Selena to contact me only if she managed to corner him. It bought me time. Precious, golden time. Time to finish what I started. Time to make these children regret ever crossing my path. And when I was done, I would rejoin Selena, and we’d take Mark together.

  Merrick… Merrick had always been the real threat.

  There were two reasons I had tread so carefully around him. First: he was the only person I’d ever met who could move in a time-stopped world as freely as I could. Not slowly. Not with struggle. Freely. That made him something else. Something beyond what I understood. That kind of power shouldn’t exist. Again, my power shouldn’t exist to.

  And second… he was ‘her’ choice.

  The man Evelyn picked after me.

  And no, I wasn’t jealous.

  This wasn’t about pride. It was about logic. Evelyn had always moved like a shadow for some time now… one step ahead, every piece in place, every counter plotted five turns in advance. If she chose Merrick, then she chose him for something. And if I was her enemy, then it was only reasonable to assume Merrick had been groomed as a counterweight to me.

  So yes, I wasn’t jealous.

  I snapped back to the present. Ivan’s body—headless, but still mobile—was charging again. A wide swing barreled toward me with an absurd, brute-force strength. I stopped time just as the blow passed inches from my ribs. The pressure of the stopped moment made my skull feel like it was splitting apart.

  Through clenched teeth, I retaliated.

  I slashed once. Twice. Then again. Again. Five strokes, each surgical, each deliberate. Lacerations bloomed across Ivan’s torso and limbs. Muscles peeled, bone split, his chest opened like a broken vault. With a final breathless command, I let time surge forward.

  Blood sprayed in fans across the hallway. Ivan staggered, and for once, he didn’t laugh. Not immediately. His arms twitched as he looked down at the damage. Then… just as his knees gave out… he smiled.

  He was already healing.

  Of course he was.

  The Berserker God didn’t die like normal people. He never had.

  I stepped back, sabre dripping, breath ragged. Every loop cost me something. Every reset frayed the edges of my control. I’d fought in timelines most people would never know existed. I had bled across years I erased seconds later. But this… this was starting to feel like a war of attrition I wasn’t winning.

  Still… I had time.

  Merrick was contained.

  Mark was close.

  "If you’re his dad, then why do you want him dead?"

  The girl’s voice broke across the battlefield like a shard of glass. Mirai Valeska. The so-called child of prophecy, and apparently, a meddlesome brat with no sense of timing.

  I turned to her, slowly, letting the words simmer in my mind. “What do you mean?”

  At this point, Ivan had regenerated his head. He let out a groan of disappointment. “More yapping?” he snarled, his massive frame coiling with unspent violence. Then he burst forward faster than before, a blur of muscle and fury.

  I drew in a breath and stopped time.

  The world fell into silence. I gritted my teeth and raised my saber, the strain of movement in this suspended world like dragging a mountain behind every swing. With precise control, I slashed downward in a clean vertical arc, bisecting Ivan in one smooth motion. His body split with a wet crunch. Blood and gore hung in midair like scattered fruit.

  My black suit was drenched. Disgusting.

  I walked over to the girl.

  Then I released the world.

  Time surged back into motion. Mirai stumbled backward, eyes wide, as if I had materialized out of nowhere. She was trembling, though she tried to hide it.

  Karl lunged from the side, missing an arm but still burning with conviction. He swung a newly conjured sword with everything he had.

  I stopped time again.

  He froze mid-lunge, his weapon a hair’s breadth from my ribs. I walked forward and pressed my saber lightly to his throat.

  Then I resumed the world.

  Karl blinked as he registered the cold steel against his skin. I leaned in. “We are in the middle of something here. Don’t interrupt.”

  He froze, just barely holding himself back.

  I turned to Mirai and stared her down. “Now. Tell me… why do you think I want my son dead?”

  She swallowed hard. But then she squared her shoulders and answered.

  “Because… the airship we were on exploded. Someone tried to kill us. I don’t get it. But if that was your doing, Mark would've died too. That wasn’t an accident.”

  I said nothing at first. The pieces didn’t fit… but her voice rang with a kind of raw truth. Not cleverness. Not misdirection. Just confusion, and the kind of courage born from desperation.

  “I see,” I murmured. “Is it my contractor’s work?”

  Someone wanted the child of prophecy dead, then. And my son… would’ve been collateral.

  I stared into her eyes a little longer. She didn’t look away. Foolish girl.

  “You have no idea what you’re entangled in,” I said. “But I’ll make it simple.”

  I stepped closer and let the edge of menace touch my voice.

  “I’ll let you and your friends live, Mirai Valeska. But hear me… don’t ever get involved with my son again. You are not worth it.”

  I didn’t wait for her reply.

  I stopped time once more and with clinical precision, slashed the heels of all three of them including the Faust girl. Nothing life-threatening. Just enough to make sure Mirai’s uncanny luck couldn’t drag her back into my path again. A limp should suffice.

  I turned away and walked through the frozen battlefield. Ivan’s bisected body was already pulling itself together. Of course it was. Nothing short of annihilation would end him for good.

  And I found I didn’t want to kill him, not anymore.

  He was a monster, yes… but an honest one. The world could use a few of those. I exhaled slowly as I made my way down the ruined corridor. I would fail this job. Lady Ash would live for now.

  But I would retrieve my son.

  That part of the mission remained. And he would be safest by my side.

  I thought back to Evelyn. Scheming Evelyn, with her quiet resolve and long reach. I never thought she had it in her. But she did. But this? This had been my chance.

  I had to come.

  Not for the job.

  For him.

  And now, I would finish what I started. Mark wasn’t safe among these fools. Not with bombs on airships. Not with assassins playing prophecy games.

  No.

  He would come with me.

  Where he belongs.