Calm Sea

My legs burned with exhaustion, each step a struggle.

I could feel the beasts closing in behind me—Caelum and Solavane, relentless, unyielding. Two minutes.

Two damn minutes, and it wasn't enough to escape them. I had to move faster. I had to outrun them.

But no matter how fast I pushed, no matter how much my body screamed in protest, they were always there, always on my tail.

Then, in the next instant—everything stopped.

The world froze.

Every sound, every motion, every breath. The air itself seemed to hold its breath, suspended in time.

I stood there, gasping for air, but it didn't come. I didn't hear the beating of my heart or the wind through the trees.

Nothing.

Everything was still, like a picture trapped in a single frame.

And then... I felt it.

A presence—no, something—looming behind me, larger than the frozen world around me. I turned, slow, cautious, but my eyes widened when I saw him: the Man in the Sea.

He stood tall, a shifting mass of water and time itself, his form both fluid and solid, as if the very concept of the sea had come to life before me.

His eyes were ancient, fathomless, staring into my soul, and his voice echoed in the frozen air, like a crashing wave.

"You run fast, but time moves faster."

His voice wasn't just sound—it pulled at me, wrapping around my thoughts like the pull of the tide.

The god's gaze swept over me, reading my every movement, my every fear. I tried to speak, but no words came.

His presence was suffocating, pressing against my chest, forcing my breath from me.

"I see you, little one," he continued. "You seek to escape fate, to defy the inevitable."

I wanted to say something.

I wanted to scream, to demand what he meant, but the words caught in my throat.

I couldn't even understand what was happening, couldn't grasp how time itself had stopped, how I was standing before this being.

"You are at a crossroads," he said, his voice pulling me deeper into the moment, "I can offer you something few mortals ever get: a fragment of time. A chance to escape the hands of fate, to move beyond it all."

The god's offer was... impossible. My thoughts were scattered, but I felt something stir in me—a hunger. A desire to be free. To move, to escape this stasis, to make things right, to save her.

But then the catch came.

"The price is high," the Man in the Sea intoned. His voice seemed to echo from everywhere, around me, within me.

"In exchange for this fragment of time, you must give me a shard of your heart, a piece of your will. You will become a slave to time itself, bound to its current forever. You will lose your sense of self, your morality. You will lose everything that makes you human."

The weight of his words pressed down on me, suffocating me, and I realized with a sickening certainty that he wasn't bluffing. This was real. This was my choice.

A part of me recoiled. I couldn't. I wouldn't.

But another part of me—the part that burned with the need to escape, to save my sister, to outrun fate—pushed those thoughts aside.

What did I have left to lose? What was the point of being human if I couldn't save her?

"Yes," I whispered, before I could stop myself. "Yes, I accept."

The Man in the Sea's gaze darkened, but his smile was something other. It was the smile of someone who had seen everything—and nothing.

He reached out, and I felt his fingers brush my chest, cold and heavy, as if they were made of water and time itself. .

The moment his touch made contact, something inside me split.

I could feel it—the shard of my heart being torn away, a piece of my very essence being yanked from me, like an organ being ripped out.

The pain was unbearable, but it wasn't the physical pain that made me stagger.

It was the emptiness—the loss of something that I didn't even know I had until it was gone.

And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it ended.

The world snapped back into motion.

I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again, everything had changed.

I wasn't where I had been.

I wasn't in the same place. I stood on the coastline, the kingdom stretched out before me in the distance.

I couldn't feel how I got here. It wasn't like teleporting.

It wasn't like running. It was as if I was here before.

As if I had always been here, and now the world was just catching up to me.

I moved. I wasn't running.

I wasn't walking. I wasn't doing anything. It was like time itself was... pulling me forward.

I passed cities, villages, forests, mountains—everything around me unfolded at an impossible speed.

The kingdom sprawled out beneath me like it was nothing, like it was a toy I could simply look down on.

I saw it all. I scaled the entire kingdom. Every inch of it. In less than a blink.

As if I was part of the very fabric of the world.

I could feel the currents of time beneath me, flowing, shifting, pulling, pushing me forward—faster, faster, faster.

It was overwhelming. Like I was drowning in time, but it didn't matter. I was free. I was beyond it.

Then, just as quickly as it had all come, the dizziness hit. My vision blurred, the world around me spinning.

I couldn't feel my body anymore, couldn't grasp where I was, couldn't grasp anything. I had become nothing.

My limbs, my thoughts, everything was lost to the rush of the current.

I passed out, the last thing I heard before the blackness claimed me was the sound of the ocean, distant and haunting, a constant reminder that I was now part of its endless flow.

***

My chest was heavy, heaving in and out, each moment that passed making my body hurt more and more. Seconds—they felt like years.

Then, I opened my eyes. It was dark—no light. My vision was clouded, fuzzy, and the imagery wasn't all there.

What the hell... Where am I?

My sense of time was... distorted. Wait—time? What's time? No, I'm not... What the hell is going on?

I reached out with my hands, feeling the rough texture of the ground beneath me. Was I hanging?

My limbs felt too heavy, my body uncooperative. Focus. I dragged myself up, pushing against the weight of the confusion.

It was only then that my vision started to focus.

Darkness. But not just any kind of dark.

The sky—two moons. Twin, unblinking, full. They stared at me, casting their light in all directions, never changing, never shifting.

No matter where I turned, they were there, watching. Unmoving.

I blinked, trying to grasp what I was seeing. There was no horizon, no stars. Just those two moons, cold and constant.

And then it hit me—I was lying on a beach.

My mind struggled to put it all together.

The coast of the continent, the sand, the scent of the ocean, but... nothing felt right.

The sand crackled under my hands and knees as I pushed myself upright, my body protesting the effort.

I looked out at the sea.

The water was perfectly still, no waves, no ripples—just a glassy surface that stretched on forever.

The calmness—it was unnerving, terrifying. Like the ocean itself was holding its breath, waiting for something, or someone.

A vast emptiness beneath it, deeper than I could comprehend.

And then I saw it.

In the distance, barely visible through the haze, there was an island. But it wasn't just an island—it was wrong.

Its shape was blurred, as if it existed on the edge of reality, a mirage that kept flickering in and out of focus.

I couldn't tell if it was real or just an illusion.

I took a step forward, but my feet felt like lead. The sand beneath me, the cool breeze—it all felt too still. Like I wasn't supposed to be here. The island, it called to me. But I didn't know why.

Was this real? Was I dead? No. I didn't feel like I had died, but nothing made sense.

The calm sea, the twin moons—the stillness—was almost suffocating. It was like being trapped in a moment, unable to move forward or backward.

My heart thudded in my chest, the only thing that still felt alive.

I couldn't tell if I was standing in the present, the past, or something entirely different.

I took another step. And the world... felt like it was holding its breath.