He felt neither cold… nor heat.
All he felt was silence.
A thick, suffocating silence, as if the void itself was speaking.
When he lifted his head, he realized he was no longer in the city.
Everything around him was frozen —
the rain suspended in the air, the leaves unmoving, even glistening droplets of water frozen mid-fall.
> [Temporal Zone Detected]
[Objective: Survive for 60 seconds of real-time.]
[Failure: Erasure from the timeline.]
He stared at the last line and shivered.
Erasure from the timeline.
In other words… eternal death.
---
He gripped the silver clock that had appeared in his hand.
Its hand moved slowly backward.
With each tick of time, he heard a faint whisper, as if forgotten voices were trying to speak to him.
> "Use me… but at a price."
He clenched it tightly, still not understanding what was happening.
Suddenly, the silence split.
From the stillness, something began to move.
As if the shadow itself had awakened.
A featureless black humanoid form emerged from the frozen raindrops, with only empty white eyes.
> [Temporal Entity: Class - Residual Time.]
[Purpose: Consume unstable subjects.]
Eren's eyes widened.
That thing fed on those who lost their temporal balance…
he had to run.
---
He ran with all his strength.
But time here was not normal —
each step took an eternity, each breath felt as if it traveled the distance between the moment and eternity.
As the shadow nearly touched him, the clock in his hand lit up.
> [Ability Activated: Minute Reversal.]
Light exploded.
In an instant, everything rewound sixty seconds.
The same frozen rain, the same suspended air… but now he remembered what would happen.
He shouted inside his head:
> "Now I understand… every use rewinds time… but it takes a memory from me!"
He felt pain in his head.
He tried to recall someone's face… but it was gone.
All that remained were tears.
---
He turned the clock again, but this time he did not reverse time —
he unleashed a beam of light that pierced the shadow's body.
> [Clock Resonance Detected.]
[Temporal Entity Neutralized.]
The entity vanished, and time moved forward again.
The rain fell, the city breathed, as if nothing had happened.
But inside Eren, something had changed.
Time was no longer a straight line…
it had become a part of him, he could breathe it, see it, and feel its fractures.
---
A new line appeared in the air:
> [Rank: F — Timebound Initiate]
[Next Objective: Find the Keeper of the Lost Minute.]
He looked up at the gray sky.
The colossal clock still loomed —
its hands turning backward, casting a circular shadow of cold light above him.
He smiled faintly, despite the pain:
> "Alright… if this is a game against time, I won't lose easily."