Daniel stepped out of the alley and slowed his pace, taking in the surroundings with a careful eye.
The place didn't look right.
The buildings were worn down, the streets were bare, and there wasn't a single tree in sight.
Everything felt stripped of life, reduced to function and nothing more. A constant low noise filled the air—distant machinery, footsteps, muted conversations—but none of it carried any energy.
What stood out the most were the people.
Everyone moving through the street looked drained. Their faces were empty, their movements mechanical, as if they were simply going through the motions of survival rather than living.
Daniel had seen that look before.
It was the same expression worn by daily wage laborers who worked endlessly without knowing what their future held.
"This place…" he muttered, narrowing his eyes slightly.
He stepped forward and stopped a passing man.
"Umm, if you don't mind, can you tell me where I am?" Daniel asked.
The man paused and looked at him.
His gaze moved over Daniel's clothes first, then shifted to his left hand, lingering there for a moment.
"30 minutes," the man said.
Daniel frowned.
"What?"
"If you pay me thirty minutes, I can tell you," the man replied, tapping his own wrist.
Daniel followed the motion.
That's when he noticed it.
Glowing numbers on the man's arm, counting down.
His confusion deepened.
"A what now?" he asked, genuinely not understanding.
The man didn't elaborate. He simply looked at Daniel's hand again, as if expecting something in return.
"So you want me to pay you minutes… as in time?" Daniel asked, frowning. "How the hell am I supposed to do that?"
For a moment, he genuinely thought the man might be unstable.
The man's expression tightened with irritation, as if Daniel had just asked something obvious. Without waiting for permission, he reached out and grabbed Daniel's left wrist, pulling back the coat sleeve that covered his hand.
"This—time is—"
The words stopped.
His voice caught in his throat.
There were no glowing green numbers.
No countdown.
Nothing.
Just skin.
The man stared at Daniel's hand as if it shouldn't be possible.
"Where is your time?" he asked slowly, his tone shifting from annoyance to disbelief. "Why is it… empty?"
His grip loosened slightly, but his eyes didn't move.
It was the kind of look someone had when they saw something that didn't belong in their world.
Daniel glanced at his own hand, then back at the man.
"…Okay," he said, now just as confused. "I feel like I just broke some kind of rule without knowing it."
"Can you explain?" Daniel asked.
The man didn't answer.
Instead, fear crept into his face. He took a step back, then another, and without another word he turned and walked away quickly, almost like he didn't want to be seen near Daniel any longer.
Daniel watched him go, frowning.
"What the hell is that guy's deal… is he crazy?" he muttered, scratching his head.
He continued down the street until, five steps later, he stopped at the sight of a body lying on the ground.
Daniel glanced around instinctively, expecting panic, concern, something—but no one reacted. People walked past it like it didn't exist, their expressions unchanged, their pace uninterrupted.
That alone told him something was very wrong.
"Yeah… there's definitely something off about this world," he said quietly.
He stepped closer to the corpse and crouched slightly, studying it.
That's when he saw it.
On the left arm—
Numbers.
Faint, digital, and frozen.
"...That looks familiar," Daniel muttered.
He reached down and lifted the man's arm slightly, focusing on the markings.
And then it clicked—a memory surfacing, a film, a concept, a world where time wasn't just measured, but used as currency.
Humanity stopped aging at twenty-five. From that moment on, a clock on their arm began counting down, and when it hit zero, they died. People earned time, spent time, traded time… and lived only as long as they could afford to.
Daniel's eyes narrowed as he slowly let go of the corpse's arm.
"…In Time," he muttered.
Now it made sense.
The man's reaction.
The demand for "minutes."
The fear when he saw Daniel's empty hand.
Daniel looked at his own forearm again, where no clock existed.
"…No wonder he ran," Daniel said under his breath.
He looked at the mark on his hand again, the golden half ticking steadily while the black half held its strange numbers.
"I wonder what those rich assholes' expressions would be if they saw this," he muttered, a faint smirk forming.
"And can I revive this guy?" he wondered aloud.
Normally, it wouldn't even be a question. As long as the soul hadn't completely faded, bringing someone back was simple for him. But this world worked differently. Here, life and death were tied directly to time, not just the body.
He didn't know if his ability would even function the same way here.
Still, hesitation wasn't his style.
"Let's try," Daniel said. "What's wrong with experimenting on a dead body?"
He grabbed the man's left wrist.
For a brief moment, nothing happened.
Then Daniel's hand darkened, a deep black spreading across his fingers like something consuming light itself. At the same time, the Mark of the Nexus reacted. The black half shifted rapidly, numbers flickering and rearranging before locking into a fixed value.
666.
The effect was immediate.
The dead man's wrist lit up.
The numbers that had been frozen at zero suddenly turned green, glowing brighter than before. Then they began to move—slowly at first, then faster.
Seconds became minutes.
Minutes turned into hours.
Hours stretched into days.
Days into months.
The count accelerated, climbing past normal limits as it pushed into years, then decades, and finally—
Centuries.
The glow stabilized.
The man's body jolted.
Air rushed back into his lungs as he gasped violently, his chest rising sharply as life returned to him all at once. His eyes snapped open, wide with shock, immediately locking onto the figure in front of him.
Daniel.
For a brief moment, they just stared at each other.
Daniel's eyes were completely dark, pitch black without a trace of light, giving off an unnatural, suffocating presence.
The man's expression twisted in terror.
And then he screamed.
"Ahhhhhhh"
*****
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