Light spilled into the garden, the system's glow sliding across every petal like a promise fulfilled. Jay felt the warmth spread through him not like a bruise but like a crown settling into place. He tightened the mask strap with one hand, then tapped the holographic prompt that floated in front of him.
[DING!]
[Congratulations! You have obtained : Ohma Zi-O Power — Time King Authority (Universal)]
The words were clinical and small against the enormous silence of the garden. They did not need to be loud. The power of that order never needed shouting — it simply was. Jay let the reality of it slide into him like water filling a glass.
He kept the mask on. He kept himself Jay. Nothing about his face changed, only the way the world answered him when he moved.
Prometheus unfolded the ability sheet in sharp white letters, each line precise and absolute:
[TIME KING AUTHORITY]
Core: Universal Chronal Dominion — Unrestricted command over time and causality across all universes, timelines, and realities. Effects are instantaneous and absolute. No energy cost, no limit, no resistance.
Abilities (Absolute / Universal):
Absolute Chronokinesis: Jay can slow, stop, rewind, accelerate, or rewrite time anywhere — any universe, any branch, any scale — instantly. Actions take effect across causal chains and are absolute.
Universal Timeline Alteration: Jay can add, remove, or rewrite events and entire eras across any universe. When he edits a timeline, the edit is final: histories reconfigure instantly to match the new causality.
Total Existence Erasure: Jay can remove entities, species, civilizations, or abstractions from existence across all realities. Erasure is complete and universal; absence is absolute.
Omniscient Branch Sight: Jay perceives all possible pasts and futures across all universes simultaneously. He reads, understands, and chooses outcomes with total clarity.
Anchored Immortality: Jay cannot be permanently erased, killed, or nullified. His existence is absolute and self-anchoring across every universe; attempts to remove him fail without exception.
Instant Regeneration & Temporal Reversion: Any injury, causal corruption, or conceptual damage rewinds instantaneously. Jay returns to any prior state he chooses, including pre-death states, with full memory.
Absolute Resistance: Jay is immune to all temporal attacks, paradoxes, reality-warping, memory alteration, plot-level edits, or any attempt at erasure or neutralization. No force in any universe can bypass him unless he allows it.
Universal Ride-Resonance: Jay may call forth the abilities, weapons, and complete skillsets of any champion, relic, or archetype from any universe and use them instantly and perfectly.
Multiversal Creation & Destruction: Jay can create matter, life, islands, planets, stars, or entire universes — and destroy them — instantly and absolutely. Creation is perfect and integrated into any chosen timeline.
Time Gate Mastery: Jay can open portals to any time, any universe, and transfer selves, objects, or entire ecosystems between realities seamlessly.
Entropy & Age Mastery: Accelerate, reverse, or absolute-freeze entropy and aging across objects, places, people, or entire universes.
Absolute Temporal Bubble: Create zones where Jay's will controls the laws of cause, effect, and continuity; within such a bubble, Jay's rulings are law across universes.
Omniversal Telepathy by Photonic-Chronal Signal: Communicate across any distance, timeline, or universe by encoding thought in time-signals. Instant, flawless.
Full Conceptual Authority: Jay can alter or rewrite abstract concepts — gravity, memory, death, law — across universes. Conceptual edits instantly cascade into consistent reality changes.
Status: All abilities integrated and active. No cooldowns. No drawbacks. No external anchoring required. Authority: Absolute.
Prometheus' final line pulsed once and then went still. There was no safety advisory. There was no balance meter. There was just the clean statement of capability and the quiet hum inside his chest that said: try it.
He pushed himself off the bench, the pledge settling into him like something welded. He didn't summon a menu. He didn't wait on beeps. He spoke. "Partner".
<< Ready, >> Caelira answered inside his head—precise, clipped, the kind of voice that weighed options like clockwork.
"Partner," Jay said, because that's what she'd become. Not an interface. Not an engine. Partner. "I want something that moves with them. Quiet. Jewelry, not talismans. Something people can wear and forget until they need it."
<< Efficient. Protective. Portable, >> Caelira agreed. << Bracelets for most. Two rings for those who'll refuse a band. I will run the lock architecture. >>
They built the first anchor together: Jay shaping intent, Caelira knitting rules into metal. The band that cooled into his palm looked ordinary—matte gunmetal, slim—until the Caelira-Lock inside it pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat waking. It was small, unassuming, exactly what he wanted: something you'd mistake for gift jewelry in a hurry.
"Just make it twenty-five," he said. "ah… and two rings. Elysia and Lala get the rings."
<< Two rings: floral for Elysia; playful charm for Lala. Binding presets queued, >> Caelira replied. Her voice held no flourish—only the efficient warmth of someone who recognized what needed doing.
He had decided on the designs after thinking about each of them. Elysia should have something soft and beautiful; she'd always loved things that looked like they belonged in a song. Lala, by contrast, needed something that made her grin and tinker—like a toy that also said, I care.
When the first rings finished in his hand, the details sat there like small truths. Elysia's looked like the picture he'd pinned in his head: a thin rhodium band with tiny leaves carved along the shoulders, a cluster of micro-roses at the crown set with pale pink crystals, and a marquise pink gem offset at an angle like a falling petal. Little opalescent stones caught light on one side so the ring glimmered with a soft rainbow when she moved.
Lala's was a different language—rose-gold plated, with a miniature charm dangling from a tiny hinge. The charm was a cute stylized mascot, a tiny robot with enamel cheeks and a minuscule spring at its arm; the charm could swing, snap shut, even reveal a teeny decorative panel like a toy-locket. It looked like something Lala would design herself and then squeal over until someone scolded her to calm down.
Jay smiled, just a little. "Alright — partner," he said softly. "Walk me through it, yeah? Plain and simple. Stay with me."
<< Understood, >> Caelira replied. << Short and exact. >>
Form: bracelets (main). Two rings reserved (Elysia & Lala). They look like normal jewelry.
Purpose: protect someone's existence — stop them from being erased, rewritten, or killed by weird "concept" attacks.
1) Immune to conceptual attacks (Conceptual-Defense Field)
If someone tries to attack the person with things that aren't just physical — like "erase them from history," "delete them from memory," instant-death rules that remove existence, or spells/contracts that rewrite what a person is — the Anchor blocks that effect for the wearer. The Anchor makes the attack irrelevant to that person; they basically get exempted from the rule. The wearer barely feels anything — maybe a tiny shiver.
2) Soul-save + auto-revive (SARP)
If the wearer dies or gets erased, the Anchor immediately stores their soul/continuity inside itself. It then tries to revive them right there. If revival inside that timeline isn't possible, the Anchor keeps their soul safe until Jay can extract and restore them. Memories and personality stay intact.
3) Emotion & killing-intent sensor
When the Anchor binds, it learns how that person usually feels — their emotional baseline. It watches for big spikes that match real danger patterns (deep fear or a focused killing intent aimed at them). When it detects that kind of danger for the users, the Anchor sends a quiet alert to Jay (and can give the wearer a subtle warning). It can tell the difference between normal panic (crowds, fireworks) and a real, targeted kill intent.
4) Forced cross-dimensional pull (Master-Pull)
If Jay chooses, he can forcibly pull the Anchor — and whoever's wearing it — out of anywhere. Dimension, timeline, alternate universe — it doesn't matter. The Anchor makes a direct connection to Jay and brings the person to him or into a safe pocket he set. This works even if local laws try to block it.
5) Temporal storage (near-infinite vault)
Each Anchor has a time-pocket for storage. Stuff can be put inside: objects, files, memory backups — even the contents of a small room. Capacity is effectively massive. The user can retrieve stored items instantly wherever he is.
Jay looked down at the master band on his wrist and breathed out. "Thanks," he said, quieter than he'd expected. "partner sorry to trouble you please call me if there is trouble."
<< Affirmative. Have a rest Master, >> Caelira answered, and even in the clipped voice there was the steady reliability Jay liked.
"Actually…" Jay murmured. "No rest. Not yet."
Caelira paused. << Master? >>
"It's been two days since I trained," Jay said, rolling his shoulder, feeling the stiffness in his body like rust waiting to be burned off. "My body's a little sore. I need to heat it up again. I can't just hold this kind of power and not earn control of it."
He looked up, eyes steady beneath the mask. "I'm going to another dimension. Somewhere empty. I'll train there — alone. I need to understand every corner of this authority before I even think about using it."
<< Understood. Shall I monitor the others in your absence? >>
"Yes," he said. "Keep your eyes on them, Caelira. Protect them. If anything happens — anything at all — call me immediately. No hesitation."
<< Acknowledged. I will maintain constant surveillance and contact protocol. >>
"Good." Jay's voice dropped to a whisper. "Time to see what a Time King can really do."
He opened his hand. A ring of light curved around him, space bending like a ripple in still water. The garden faded — petals, light, air — swallowed by the shimmering fold of a temporal gate.
And then he was gone, leaving only silence behind and a faint shimmer in the air, as if time itself had exhaled.
In the vault, the bracelets rested quietly — waiting — while Caelira watched over the world he'd left behind.