{Prologue} Marionette of Time

Time. What is time, and why did we fear it so much? Perhaps it is death, but the unknown fear of it draws our intricate human nature—the loss of ourselves. As we wither away to the march of change, memories become ash. 

Maybe I was afraid of it: losing myself. Countless flashes of death and loss ached me, no matter what chance I had. Saving them? I wanted that, but only because the thought of being by myself made me lonely. So lonely.

 I just didn't want it to happen anymore, this unending cycle.

With the world behind me and the ticking of time in my hands —I lurch forward to the ground, my hands to the snow burrowed into my lesions. This story of the frost with the red sea unfolded before me time and time again.. Snowy peaks and a stretch of darkened white in the face of blood seemed to be the only ending. I scanned with a gaze not higher than the ground, looking at the arms and legs that are laid. Frostbite turned them blue, but it is maybe their lack of breath that quickened it. the bodies that sprawled upon the winter kingdom are bugs trampled.

 Many people. I had lost them, but even in the face of those whose presence and time I shared, I only ever looked at him. Even when his skin turned blue, he was still so lovely, and I pitied that I couldn't follow the sun any longer.

With eyes full of nothing, his face is colder than the ice beneath: he is a dead sun. Even as the snow swallows the blood of the bodies which buried the soil, the stillness of a white landscape is beautiful yet morbid in its sight. Like a foxglove, he is the needle in my eye. Possibly no one else could have been.

Could I have saved you if I had more time? I still wonder like a foolish little dead flower. If he knew what I had done to have come this far, surely, he would not hesitate to end me. You were always more righteous than you showed—maybe a bit too much.

"Hero of Magic," called out the veiled woman behind me. Looking down at my hands, I turn my ears away, held between my hands soaked in blood. She calls again, "Head Leader Minato."

This time I look to the sunken heavens, perhaps not high enough, as the only thing was her veiled face and not at what is above. Donned in black, nothing fit her title as the Keeper of time and Bane of Night any better. The embroidered ravens on her dress only made the terror of my heart tauten. I smiled like a doll. "You want me to die again?"

She stands, neither moving nor speaking. With a huff and a knife against my throat, I peer at her like a lost child to strangers, looking for help from a source unknown.

Even then, she watches . "Are you sure that you would tamper with time?"

I don't want to. I'm tired.

"Why not? I already did before." A sting hisses from a growing line on my throat, but just then, she grabs me. I bobmy head to the side. "What is it?"

"You do not seek death, do you?" She spoke like she knew everything because she did. "Why do you wish to turn time so earnestly? This is the fourth time. If you are to do it once more after this, you will perish forever."

"Maybe because I shared the same ideals as him. I would like to see it happen too."

"That's a lie. Your ideals were far different. Why do you think he hated you in the beginning when you met him? He wanted revenge. You did not want revenge, and how could you even want this revenge? It never involved you."

She seems to notice my apathy toward her words; maybe that is why she looked away from me.

She points to the bead in the man's hand, a golden gem in black light. "You already found the secrets to the Seer's Library, as a result, meeting me." She stares for a moment and continues, "That was already fifteen years ago, if you count the years collectively that which you reversed."

"Why not give in to fate?" She picks up the golden gem. "The flicker of life at the end of this tunnel was not meant to be in your timeline."

I smile gleefully. "Because I just need everyone to live. I don't know what I want anymore, but I do want everyone to live, even those I hate."

The woman lingers in her silence, and her hand grips my wrist just enough that the knife would not dig into me. Without eyes or a mouth, she still gazed at me, like she had seen the most pitiful of creatures to have ever crawled past. I feel my smile falter for a moment; not by her question, but by the understanding that — I am going to die again, and she knows that too. But her nature as someone who transcended humanity, both life and death, and as the Keeper of Time, she cared not for my inhibitions but merely the contract that we made.

A Bane—I wonder and say, "Have you ever loved someone?"

"Love." She sighs. "Do as you wish, but the raven knows all, even your reasons."

I know. "So, let me reverse time again. Just once more, before I die." I look down at the ashen man and avert my eyes. "Just so I can save him." 

My eyes close, refusing to look at the dulled gaze of the sun I love, and without a quiver in my hand, the blade slashes across my eyes; the last thing I see is the blood splattered to the hand of the man —like he had been the one who murdered me.

I knew it would never come to be, this most sincere and odious wish. No matter where I turned, there was only a black dahlia at the end, just like he told me. Humans consume everything that pleases their mouths, the stench of altruism engulfed in the caverns of greed. 

Even he fought like this, for revenge of those he loved. But how many had died and how many times had this happened? I loved him, but even I realized the selfishness of everything that he had done. When I looked at his sorrowful eyes for the past fifteen years, I had an inkling that perhaps he also felt the same about it.

If revenge was what he wanted, and if this was going to save those I had lost, all of them, then I could hold my head as high as I could, and do it all over again: facing self-induced death.

Just before I felt the darkness enshroud me, his words came back to me: "People are wildflowers, like buds about to bloom but faded right before spring petals could fall. Chasing after every broken dream, cowering in the face of death. And no matter what you do, you cannot teach a dead man another way of life." He always hated that about humanity, yet I always wondered whether he talked about himself because — you always seemed lonely.