The wilderness ended the way all impossible things did—with silence.

One step they were walking beneath a sky of fractured dawns, and the next, the ground simply… stopped.

Before them stretched an ocean that wasn't water at all. It shimmered like liquid glass, reflecting not their faces, but moments—memories. Kael saw himself as a boy, laughing at a sunset that had never existed. Eira saw a battlefield she hadn't yet fought. Jorah saw a pub, half-forgotten, where a version of him still smiled with friends he'd outlived by centuries.

The Sea of Lost Hours rippled, and the reflections vanished.

Eira broke the silence first. "That's not normal water."

Kael gave her a dry look. "Really? I was just about to go for a swim."

Jorah snorted. "Yeah, and dissolve into baby photos while you're at it."

The Chrono Blade hummed faintly in Kael's grip, reacting to the sea. It pulsed in rhythm with the waves, as if the very fabric of time beneath them recognized its kin.

"This is it," Kael murmured. "The Sea of Lost Hours. Every second that's ever been forgotten ends up here."

Eira frowned. "So it's… memories?"

"Not just memories," Kael said. "Moments. Choices. Futures that never happened. Time doesn't like waste—it recycles its own."

Jorah squinted at the horizon, where the ocean met a broken sky. "And we're supposed to cross that?"

Kael grinned, the kind of grin that made Eira groan instantly.

"Oh no. Don't you dare say it."

"We build a boat."

"I hate you," she muttered.

"You'll live."

Jorah sighed. "Can't we just teleport? Or maybe bribe time with a sandwich?"

"Temporal energy's unstable here," Kael said, already examining the floating shards of light near the shore. "Teleportation would turn us into toddlers or corpses. Possibly both."

"That's not comforting."

"It wasn't meant to be."

Eira crouched beside him. "You actually think this junk will float?"

Kael touched one of the shards—it vibrated, then solidified into something almost wood-like. "Not float," he said, standing. "Drift."

---

An hour later, they had what could technically be called a vessel.

It looked more like a broken dream stitched together with stubbornness: fragments of time-shards, bound by Chrono energy and Jorah's endless swearing.

The "boat" hovered just above the surface of the sea, its edges glowing faintly.

Jorah eyed it skeptically. "You sure this won't dissolve the moment I step on?"

Kael smirked. "No. But that's what makes it fun."

"Fantastic," Jorah muttered, stepping aboard anyway. "If I turn into a toddler, you're changing my diapers."

"Over my dead timeline," Eira said, climbing in after him.

Kael followed last, the Blade anchoring itself into the hull with a resonant hum. The moment it did, the sea responded—waves of light rolled outward, and the vessel began to drift.

They sailed across a horizon that shifted every few minutes. One moment, they floated beneath stars. The next, beneath a noonday sun that belonged to another age. The water shimmered beneath them, showing flashes of lives they'd never lived—Eira teaching in a quiet village, Jorah running a tavern, Kael kneeling beside a woman whose face he couldn't quite remember.

"Do you ever wonder," Jorah said quietly, "if we're the wrong versions of ourselves?"

Eira glanced at him. "What do you mean?"

He nodded toward the glowing surface. "Maybe there's a version of us out there that got it right. One that didn't screw up. One that stayed happy."

Kael didn't answer immediately. He watched the rippling waves instead—the flickers of other Kaels, countless of them, each walking different paths.

Some were kings. Others, monsters.

Finally, he said, "Maybe. But if they got it right, it means we get to keep trying until we do."

Eira gave him a rare smile. "That's almost profound."

"Almost?" Kael said, feigning offense.

A tremor ran through the boat before she could respond. The sea stilled. The horizon folded in on itself, and for a heartbeat, everything went quiet.

Then came the voice.

"You don't belong here."

It was soft, yet it carried the weight of centuries. The sea itself whispered the words, each wave echoing the same phrase again and again, distorting it until it became a chant.

Jorah's sword was out in an instant. "Great. Haunted water. Because why not."

Shapes began to rise from the sea—figures made of glass and memory, faces half-formed, bodies trembling between existence and reflection. They were echoes—the forgotten selves of those who had crossed the Sea of Lost Hours before.

Kael's grip tightened around the Chrono Blade. "Don't touch them."

Eira raised her weapons. "Do they bleed?"

"No. They remember."

The first echo lunged.

Kael parried the strike—it shattered into a thousand glimmering fragments, each one whispering a memory as it fell. Another followed, then another, until the boat was surrounded by ghosts of time itself.

Jorah hacked through them, snarling. "There's too many!"

"They're drawn to paradox," Kael shouted. "To us!"

"So what's the plan, genius?"

Kael's eyes darted to the Blade, then to the sea around them. "We remind time why we exist."

He plunged the Chrono Blade into the ocean.

The reaction was instantaneous.

A pulse of blue light erupted outward, freezing everything—the echoes, the waves, even the horizon itself. For a moment, the world hung still, caught between seconds. Then, from the depths below, something answered.

A shadow stirred—massive, endless, its form too vast to comprehend. It was shaped like a clockwork leviathan, gears for scales and light spilling from its eyes. It rose slowly, a titan made of lost moments.

Eira whispered, "What in all hells is that?"

Kael's voice was steady, though his heart raced. "The Guardian of the Hours. The one who guards this sea."

The leviathan turned its head, focusing its enormous gaze on Kael.

Its voice was the sound of collapsing stars.

"You seek the Keeper."

Kael nodded once. "We do."

"Then prove your worth. Show me time can be defied without being destroyed."

Kael grinned, breathless. "Challenge accepted."

---

The leviathan struck first.

Its tail—made of whirling minutes—swept toward the boat. Kael leapt high, the Blade singing as it cut through the air, shattering a fragment of the beast's form. Eira followed with twin slashes of her own, her movements blurring through frozen seconds, each strike overlapping with its own echo.

Jorah hurled a broken spear of time-glass straight into the creature's chest. It shattered—then rewound, returning to his hand. "Okay, that's weirdly satisfying."

The leviathan roared, shaking the sea. The waves themselves rose, each one a wall of shimmering memories crashing toward them.

Kael raised the Blade—and laughed.

"Come on, then!" he shouted into the chaos. "Let's see what eternity's got!"

He swung once, twice—the Chrono Blade slicing through the very concept of motion. The waves froze mid-crash, then reversed, returning to calm. The sea stilled. The leviathan hovered, watching him.

And then—it bowed.

"You carry the spark," it said. "The Keeper waits beyond the horizon. But beware—he remembers you, even when you do not."

Kael's grin faltered. "What does that mean?"

"You'll see. When time remembers your face."

With that, the leviathan dissolved into light, sinking beneath the surface until only ripples remained.

---

The silence that followed was deep and strange.

Eira sheathed her blades slowly. "You have a real talent for upsetting cosmic entities."

Jorah exhaled. "I can't believe we're still alive."

Kael sat down on the deck, staring at his reflection in the still water. For a moment, the reflection didn't move with him—it smiled a heartbeat too late.

He looked up, eyes narrowing.

"Let's move. The Keeper's close."

As the boat drifted onward, the sea around them began to darken—not with shadow, but with depth. Stars shimmered beneath the surface, as if they were sailing over the night sky itself.

And far ahead, where the horizon folded in upon itself like paper, something vast waited—an impossible city made of gears and light, spinning endlessly at the edge of creation.

The Keeper's Domain.

Time was no longer laughing.

It was holding its breath.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.