Prologue: An Anomaly

"Why bring your poor servants into this Eon?" I asked calmly, staring at Eon a few meters away from me as three of his servants popped up out of nowhere and encircled his figure, their purple visors gleaming in the sunlight. "You know it's pointless."

"I'll be the judge of that, time walker," he said, his voice deep and distorted. The air sizzled as his servants pulled out their purple energy swords, taking combat stances. "Chasing me was a mistake." Eon's purple eyes glowed menacingly.

"On the contrary, Eon," I shook my head, a mocking smile stretching across my lips as my body tensed for action. "After all, this is merely history repeating itself."

Eon's purple eyes widened in rage at my words, his fists clenched tightly as dark purple sparks of energy pulsated dangerously from them, crackling sounds echoing all over the wide forest field.

The next moment, he stretched his left hand towards me. "No! Not this time. I'm breaking out of this accursed time loop!" He bellowed in anger, shooting a wide and fast beam of crackling purple energy towards me.

Effortlessly, I tilted my head to the side, dodging it. The beam hit a thick oak tree behind me, cutting through it and five more other trees after it, disintegrating all of them to dust in an instant.

"Get me his head!" Eon ordered his henchmen, and they all jumped towards me immediately with unnatural agility, their buzzing energy swords swinging towards my head.

Sidestepping, I avoided a downward swing from one of the henchmen, spreading dust and dirt all over as the blade struck the ground. I twisted my body and kicked his hand, the blade flying out of his grasp, and kneed his chin.

The impact sent him reeling backward, knocking him unconscious. Without a minute passing, two other swings came for me almost immediately in sync.

One diagonal and the other horizontal, intending to cleave me into pieces. I leaped above them, their attacks hitting the empty air, and teleported to their backs.

Before they could react, I spun my body midair and kicked the back of the neck of one of them, sending him flying like an arrow. He crashed against a tree, breaking it, and fell on the ground, motionless.

Quickly, the last one turned and swung his sword vertically, the air sizzling sharply as it traced its glowing edges.

A small smirk drew on my face as the attack drew near gradually, its speed decreasing in my perception until it and everything around me was moving at a turtle's pace.

Landing on the ground, I stepped towards him and, controlling my strength, sent a chop to the side of his neck. His body instantly collapsed on the grassy floor, his sword hurling out of his hand, as my perception returned to normalcy.

"Why resist the inevitable Eon?" I sighed as I turned to face the renegade time traveler standing a few meters away from me. "This is, has, and will always end up the same way." I removed my pocket watch and popped it open, checking the time.

...In a few moments, Eon would be imprisoned, and the last piece of the loop would fall into place...

"...When I'm done with you, Time Walker, it all won't matter," He growled as two large purple spheres of swirling energy hovered above his palms. "Prepare to meet your end."

The two spheres floated above his head and collided, merging into one humongous and towering sphere of energy, as big and wide as a large house, distorting the space around it.

The wind, influenced by the sphere, howled as it moved violently around us, generating a force almost akin to a tornado that made all the trees and grass around us sway, stretching and breaking their roots.

I stood firm in the midst of this, my body untouched by the strong, seemingly cataclysmic effect of the wind, and shook my head in disappointment.

...Youngsters, when would they ever learn?

"Die!" Eon cried as he stretched forth his hand towards me.

The gigantic sphere, following his declaration, fell towards me at an unreasonable speed, casting an expansive dark shadow over me and a significant portion of the field, the wind crackling as if it was being ripped apart by it.

With a thought, my body disappeared from my position and appeared in the sky, high above the sphere as it impacted the ground. Instead of an explosion of catastrophic proportions, the sphere rather sunk into the ground.

The next moment, an eerie hum resounded as an incredibly deep and wide hole, about twenty meters, appeared in place of my previous location, clouds of dust particles swimming all over the place.

The interesting thing was that the energy sphere was hovering inside the hole, expanding it continuously as any form of matter surrounding it was being disintegrated.

"Scatter," Eon's voice echoed from below, and with a pop, the sphere glowed intensely and broke apart into hundreds of miniature spheres.

Swiftly, they flew out of the hole and rushed towards me, cutting through the air like missiles, at almost inconceivable speeds that made them seemingly disappear.

Smiling at the sight of their speeds, I manipulated the spatiotemporal axis, slowing down time to a crawl as the fastest sphere instantly appeared a few meters below me.

But untethered, the sphere didn't lose its momentum and continued along its path towards me together with the rest of the sphere.

Smirking, I drifted across the sky to the right, dodging the fastest sphere. The rest, as if locked on my heat signature, changed direction and sped towards me.

A nostalgic smile spread on my face as I saw this and turning my body, I flew away towards the distant mountains, the spheres chasing me.

...This part of the battle had always been my favorite...

Maneuvering through the air at high speeds, I weaved through the cliffs and jagged peaks of the rocky mountain chain smoothly, dissipating all of the spheres as they exploded upon impact with the mountains, tearing out large chunks of them.

Bending a curve around the summit of one of the rocky mountains, I came to a stop above a cliff below it and landed on it, unslowing down time.

The booming sound of the sphere colliding with the mountains thundered all over the place, the shock waves making the mountain chain and the surrounding area tremble as if experiencing an earthquake.

The cool wind kissed my face and air as I admired the picturesque view of a flourishing valley in front of me. I turned my head to look behind me as footsteps sounded behind me.

"Finally come to end this personally, Eon?" I asked calmly, turning to face him, my hands tucked in the pockets of my lab coat. "It's about time."

"Yes, about time you perished," He said gravely. He whipped his left arm, and a purple dagger made of energy extended out of his gauntlet. "The time loop en—"

"—ds today. Said by Eon more than a thousand times now," I let out a chuckle in amusement, shaking my head with a wide smile on my face. "Let's just get this over with. I don't have all day." I yawned loudly, my hand on my mouth, taunting him.

He gritted his teeth, his right hand bawling up into a tight fist that simmered and crackled with arcs of purple energy, and jumped towards me at superhuman speeds, cracking the ground, howling at the top of his voice.

"Aaaah!"

Suddenly, with no warning, my eyes widened in shock as a large wave of chaotic spatiotemporal disturbance appeared out of thin air and washed over both of us.

Immediately, Eon's body flashed with a bright purple light and vanished while I stumbled back and fell on one knee, my head pounding as my body started flickering in and out of existence.

I could sense the very fabric of space-time warping, twisting, and rewinding in this dimension, as if there was some form of error and it was trying to rewrite itself.

Shifting my eyes, I could see my surroundings blurring, the electromagnetic spectrum distorting in such a way that even light was fracturing, making the whole place a mess of kaleidoscopic arrays.

I could feel my spatiotemporal axis tilting out of my place, my connection to the Timestream waning as my control over time slowly slipped away from my fingertips.

My body struggled to fight the chronal rejection this reality was inflicting on my visage. It was as if the entire Dimension wanted to expunge me from the face of reality, and going by what I saw happen to Eon, that was going to be my fate in all likelihood.

I had to leave here. There was no way of telling how long I could survive in this place and in this state. I didn't know what was going on, but for a disturbance of this magnitude to occur, then it meant that there was something horribly wrong with the Timestream.

And judging by my calculations, if left unchecked, it could very well threaten the existence of the Multiverse. There was no way I was going to let that happen...

Clenching my teeth due to the pain in my head, I forced myself to focus on my gradually loosing tether to the Timestream and used every last bit of control I had left over time to open up a portal.

In front of me, space swirled, and a large blue spiral portal formed, and without wasting much time, jumped into it. The next moment, I appeared in the Timestream, falling face-first on one of the hard thick violet branches ever-present in this dark infinite space.

A little groggy, I rose up to my feet and straightened up my coat and vest, as miraculously my headache and discomfort gradually disappeared. There was nothing left after a few seconds.

I bawled my hands into tight fists, straining my muscles and nodded when I felt my strength was back. Then, my lips curled up as I felt my spatiotemporal axis tilting back to its rightful position, my connection and control over time returning to its previous state.

It seemed the effects of that wave didn't extend to the very center of Time. Thank goodness. But just as I feared, there was something wrong here, something out of place, something impossible...

My eyebrows narrowed as my eyes scanned all over the dark infinite expanse, observing all the violet tendril-like branches that crisscrossed and extended all over the place without end, spreading my temporal perception also to aid in my search.

After a few minutes, my eyes shot open as I detected traces of an abnormality. A phenomenon I'd encountered just a few moments ago...

I let out a deep and heavy sigh and started massaging my temple with my right hand's fingers. That wave of spatiotemporal disturbance had also been here.

No, it was safe to say this was its origin point. I could feel its chaotic influence everywhere. An anomaly had occurred. An anomaly powerful enough to cause a reaction in the Timestream so profound that if I wasn't mistaken, had shaken up the temporal flow of the Multiverse.

If my conjectures were correct, time itself had been changed. The entire Multiverse had possibly been compromised.

This changed everything. The history of entire dimensions could possibly be rewritten. Whether it was for the better or worse, I, in the first time in my long life, didn't have the faintest idea.

But what I did know was that, as always, I was the one who had to go and investigate to make sure everything was alright.

After all, no one cared. The Chronosapiens, The Time Beasts, The Naljians, The Contumelia, and even The insufferable Celestialsapiens, none of them cared. I was the only who did, so it was up to me to fix everything.

...Hopefully, for the first time in a long time, whatever caused all this to happen would be a creature or being of good...