The Zero Countdown

Chapter 19: Static world

"I'm the Time Keeper... There is nothing to hide anymore, Mister Elyon." Those words kept echoing deep within his abyss deeper than anything else he fears.

It was as if the unexpected thing Elyon had already anticipated still hit his reality so hard that he's rendered motionless, the same cold wind blew the breeze of malice, dropping the chocolate ice cream cone in his hand as it melts on the floor near the mossy grasses.

He already knew the answer, for the direction that the pieces of the unknown he scrambled together only points Madela as the true bearer of the timekeeping capabilities. She who can reverse the geat causality of the end, ignoring the entanglement which binds the realm of space and time by her will; a reality-altering Fantasm Ability under the External Classification.

"Madela... Why? Why would you choose to suffer than be a normal little girl? You have a reason of your own, everyone does I know it, but you're too young to be—"

Out of nowhere, even though Madela has a small and frail body like any ordinary girl the age of her, she threw aside chocolate ice cream in cones, she then crawl up his arms and attach herself to his back, and from there she puts her index finger in between his lips and touched him slow and stead that Dionsy is pressed against his cheek.

"Shush yourself, little boy. Be careful who you call a frail little girl. I can slit your neck from here and tell everyone here in the park the perpetrator ran away." Madela speaks like a child, but the sternness stemming from her voice deviates from her usual difficulty in articulation and pronunciation of words.

It's as if she is the same person but older than him, her very thoughts hold deeper meaning, and behind him is the looming death she could have never known.

As a family strolling around the park passes by, Madela saddled herself on Elyon's shoulder, rubbing and pulling his hair out acting like the adorable girl she can be.

"How sweet and precious they are together. He's such a kind father. And his daughter's blonde hair is so soft... He must be taking care of her every day." A woman said. Her husband holding the hand of her daughter also gets amused by Elyon and Madela's fake relations.

"Dad! I also want to be carried like her!" The girl pestered her father, wanting a higher view while they are walking the park.

"Maybe when we get home? Dad's getting weak lately, I'll carry you later I promise." Her father made a pinky promise to her little girl, beaming in happiness.

"Really? Yay!" The little girl bounces like it's the merriest day of her life.

The people in the park around their neighborhood suddenly become crowded. With Madela in control of Elyon, she pinches the lobe of his ears left and right to command him where they'll go. Until eventually, they arrive somewhere nice and quiet, the crowns of the trees protect them from the sunlight, and the unveiling of truth comes forth.

Madela steps off of Elyon and landed perfectly in the protruding grasses, grabbing her doll by its head. Her precise footwork and balance had enabled her to be extremely nimble and fast.

"You seem knowledgable more than your age. Just what are you?" Elyon asks, incapable of fathoming what's happening inside the head of an ostensibly harmless little girl.

"Simplicity of the living surely fascinates the ignorant, crippling their very lives when I am here standing atop the mountain of wisdom none shall ever acquire. And now, holding the chalice of the end, where do I belong? In the dilated past I inhabit? Or tomorrow that I can never reach?"

Madela crosses her arms, she walks around in a circle, questioning the very nature of life, doubting the way she lived up until that very day.

"......" Elyon stayed silent. He can't comprehend her words striking the wisdom he couldn't tap on his own.

"I do apologize for speaking strange so let me simplify things for you... What if you can travel back in time, and you retain the memories of the past that once was the future?" Madela asked him instead.

"If I can travel back in times for how many times you can... Then you can do anything in the world." Elyon answered, tinkering his mind a bit whether he has replied correctly based on what he learned from Brina so far.

"I think you didn't quite get it. What I'm telling you is that if I travel back in time... Shouldn't the days I experience would become part of me?" Madela places the hint closer, and it was then Elyon finally realized what she meant.

"You mean—"

"That's right... For hundreds and thousands of years, I kept repeating this loop of time over and over again. Innumerable days of existing in this world had its effect. I am no longer a 7-year-old little girl, after all, I had acquired all the knowledge of the world, I freely did what I want, become who I want to be... I am the embodiment of humanity, I am Madela, the first barrier of mortality within this dimensional prison I cannot escape."

The bearer of eternity who lived for countless millennia inside a repeating dilation of time explains why she's smarter than the way she looks. With all the time she has access to, despite the fact she's restricted in her home grounded by her mother, Madela still finds a way of collecting information about the Fantasms every day.

She holds the wisdom of all humanity packed in a singular timeline, saturating her mind in experience and atrocity, understanding the world as a whole fabric, learning how cruel people could get for their own selfish requests.

Whether Elyon wanted to or not, he grabbed the pistol hidden in his pocket and considered the fact Madela's acrobatics skills can topple him off. He directly pointed his firearms at her head. His visions wavers, his arms are shaking uncontrollably, for he couldn't take the responsibility of killing a skilled Fantasm in a little girl's skin.

"But why? Why do you want to do this? I'll shoot if you move from there, Time Keeper." Elyon slightly puts pressure on the trigger.

The keeper of time may be fast and skilled, but even she can't circumvent herself and elude a point-blank gunshot right in front of her.

"Hah... You who I have seen dead for so many times? A deadman shouldn't threaten the one who saved you so far from the grace of probabilities... I mean, out of the conceivably million days you underwent, there is only one when you become conscious of your surroundings."

Madela hugs her doll Dionsy. She had seen far more terrifying things in reality that a g*n directed at her never puts her in jeopardy.

"Then what is your purpose? I should at least hear why you chose to reiterate this day many times." Elyon was just concerned about her.

Meanwhile, Brina's behind the bushes, her g*n's ready to eliminate her target faster than a blink of an eye if ever Elyon messes up.

"It is not a purpose, more like a mistake I did in the distant past I long forgotten." Madela deliberately walks to him, caressing the g*n he's clenching with both his hands.

Even if she has thousands of years of experience and training, her frail and small body remains weak as her physical aging has completely halted, except her mentality and consciousness put in a repeating cycle of time allowed her to keep knowledge and wisdom far greater than anyone else could imagine.

"A mistake, huh... Even the one who holds dominion over time can't fix her mistake, what of us who can't have a second chance?" Elyon agrees. His hands and arms are stiff, a single error of putting too much pressure on the trigger could blow up Madela's head.

"Yes... It is a mistake that I cannot revert. You see, after living for almost eternity, I begin to wonder, what truly is the purpose of humanity? What is my purpose, is what you asked earlier, right? Answering your inquiry now... Maybe to protect what is already left for me, just like you, and doing so means I can tell myself that I did my best... I did what I can for all it's worth."

She who lived so long, questions her very existence starting from the roots of creation. The sole duty of protecting what she has is a common human act, to preserve what is left and dispose of the threat, she sauntered along the planes of time, and her answer remains unchanged like the cold wind blowing on her cheeks.

"That's why you can save everyone by reversing the time before it happens. Surely you can do such—" Elyon ceases his speech when Madela shouts aloud.

"And that's also why I can never save anyone or myself! First of all, I cannot revert the time before the game started. Second, I can only use my ability twice a day, but the mistake I did prevents me from going forward... Not only I had set a time where I cannot go back in time, but I also went back in the past when all my ability is depleted. Do you get what I'm talking about now?"

Madela insinuates. It was then Elyon realized that she messes up the very fabric of time.

"No way... Does that mean you came back when your Fantasm Ability is already exhausted? And since you used your ability, you go back in time again in your exhausted state and thus, repeating the endless cycle over and over again..."

Surely the world is complicated and enigmatic, but even Elyon can tell that they are now stuck inside a world that has no past nor future—a static world that keeps recounting herself was the mistake of a little girl who once didn't understand her ability well.

"I am no adventurer, nor a keeper of time... I am an entity devoid of reason, an entity who disrupted the balance of time... That's exactly why I will win this preposterous game!"