★90
ASTERI'S POV
"The Architects of Time."
I spoke up.
(NOTE, Unless revealed like Inception, I'll use the pronouns "he/she" and "him/her" to address them because their actual gender is concealed for the moment).
"What do we have here, Inception?"
"A Star—a Race of Gods."
"Oh, the so-called supreme beings."
Another voice hissed.
"...for a God to attack one of 'our' home."
Murmurs rippled through the circle, some condemning, others eerily silent.
"I didn't kill anyone."
I said sharply, the words forcing their way out. I didn't want to reply but it's instinct, so I reply to protect myself.
"Who gave you permission to speak?"
The Architect wreathed in a translucent arc tapped his foot once. And my world collapsed. My reversion froze mid-pulse. My senses shut down one by one. I couldn't move or think.
A perfect, merciless halt. A Type I Time Stop was imposed on me without needing to affect Energy Fragments.
And all I could do was hang suspended in a moment that refused to pass.
"Calm down, Pause. We need to hear him out."
A firm voice cut through the tension. Acceleration's hand swept lightly, and the stolen flow of time snapped back into me, like breath returning to dead. I was free—but I didn't dare move. One wrong twitch here could spark a catastrophe.
"As well as why Inception summoned us."
Said the Architect whose mask was etched with drifting time-patterns.
Then, for the first time, one of the silent ones spoke, soft but heavy enough to bend the room around it.
"I think we've waited long enough, Inception."
The air tightened. Even the Architects who showed no emotion subtly straightened. All eyes turned to the Architect of Inception.
And only then did she finally begin to speak.
"One of my ten Aeon Zones, EARTH BO-OV-02, was destroyed by this gaseous bastard."
"Hehe, proof is needed, miss. How are we sure you're not trying to use us to dispose of him?"
One of them giggles.
"No jokes, Sequence. However, he's right. We need evidence he did it."
The Architect of Acceleration intervenes.
"Not guilty."
The underage Architect murmured to himself as if he were nervous.
"O—ok. If Memory says so, he's not guilty."
"Not fair. How come you believe him without proof? I mean—"
Sequence was still grumbling under his breath when a sharp snap cut the air cleanly in half. The sound wasn't loud, but it was final.
Every Architect turned instinctively toward the one who made it. The Architect marked with golden time-patterns looping across his mask like living script.
He didn't speak because he didn't need to. Yet his message rolled through the chamber without a single word spoken, a command delivered through presence alone. Quiet and impossible to ignore.
Sequence fell silent immediately. Everyone else followed.
"—un—please watch. Return."
Inception urged before commanding Return.
"See for yourself. But be warned, what you may see may not be what it was. I'm not a database, I don't know what happened."
Return can fake a past, but that's going against The Root.
His uncertainty about whether the past may be altered is based on whether Inception has tempered the past or not. She's feared because her Aspect let's her act outside the nrom. That's why Sequence pressed for proof, fear that she's not actually based on emotions.
But still, with or without proof, only one Architect among the ten can possibly attempt to prove her wrong and said Architect has voiced their thoughts already.
A magic circle similar to what Inception used appeared before him. After that, the current Zone Inception reversed was nullified by Absence to prevent any hidden plots.
The clock hands rotate backwards. As it did, atoms, dust, and rubble began piling up regenerating the lost Aeon Zone. In a matter of seconds, the Zone was restored to an even better scale compared to what Inception did.
The eleven of us from the present were now living in the past. I saw myself, the real me, Antares, come to this Zone on his way to the Cardinal World. As a vessel, the reason was unknown, but I had to oppose the fact that I killed them.
The young star descends into the Aeon Zone after escaping from a Dark Star. He came here to seek refuge before leaving. After staying for two days, he felt but surprisingly came back shortly.
From the Hyper Space, sparks ignited, and a turret materialized. The destructive magical turret released jet black flames wiping the Zone before he fled in the same direction he came.
"They say the past should stay buried. We don't belong here."
Return's clock stopped ticking, and Acceleration stepped in, taking us back to the present.
"As you can see, he left and came back before igniting the Zone in apocalyptic flames, ending a whole race. A clear, unreasonable massacre. Unless you have a reason for doing so?"
"No."
I replied. Oblivious to why Antares annihilated that peaceful world
"See."
"No, as in I didn't kill them. I wasn't the one."
Then came the og, replying directly.
"Not guilty."
Memory murmurs again.
"Speak up, you little kid—"
Sequence was about to do something funny when he froze mid-talk. All eyes turned to the Architect with a silver mask. This wasn't Return's doing. It's Causality.
"He's not guilty."
Causality spoke confidently.
"Ok. We're ten. How about a vote?"
Potential suggested.
"Yay for guilty and nay for not guilty."
"Nay."
Memory whispered, Causality murmured, Duration and Sequence spoke.
(Sequence was freed from his suspension, so he participated.)
"Yay."
While Inception, Return, Acceleration, Pause, and Potential oppose.
"Absence."
Causality murmured, requesting he pick a side.
Normally, none of them casually interact with Absence due to his absence and peculiar nature. After keeping them waiting for as long as he wanted, he shook his head. (Nay.)
"Five to five good. We all know what comes next."
Potential sighed and casually drew his translucent sword from inside his shirt, its edge shimmering like something half-imagined.
One by one, the others followed, light and swords taking shape in their hands.
Sequence, Potential, Causality, Return, and Pause sank their blades straight into the ground, the impact echoing like a silent vow.
Acceleration, Memory, and Duration kept theirs raised, grips firm, as if poised between action and restraint.
Absence slid out a small dagger that seemed to erase the space around it. And Inception, weaponless, simply shifted her stance, ready in a way no weapon could replicate.
They chanted all together in a unified voice.
"By Aeon Root and the First Clock's breath,
We, the bearers of Time's fractured truths,
Call upon the One who is not a shard but the Whole."
Then, one by one they each began with Inception taking the lead.
"Where thought begins and purpose is sown,
You are the Author before the idea is known.
To you, I bend the dream's axis."
Potential speaks,
"Possibility unborn, I cradle in thought,
The unseen threads that fate has not caught.
Let the Total weave them into being."
Acceleration speaks,
"Let time race, no boundary, no chain!
I launch the echo through space and plane,
To reach the One who sees the end from the start!"
Sequence speaks,
"Before all turns, a sequence lies,
From which all beats of time arise.
Architect of Order, I name thee first."
Causality speaks,
"Cause and effect, linked and bound,
But you, Totality, are the reason beneath reason.
Come, where consequence collapses."
Duration speaks,
"Continuity that never breaks,
The flow uncut, the moment that wakes.
Totality, I hold the line for thee."
Pause speaks,
"When silence reigned, and time stood still,
When even change bends to still will.
I offer the stillness before the stir."
Memory murmurs,
"All that was and could be kept,
Within the vault of what is wept.
I recall the truth that shaped the start."
Return speaks,
"And if time loops, it loops through will.
What begins returns.
I pull the thread backwards, yet not too still."
Absence murmurs,
"Even the void dares not unmake you.
Where I remove, you remain.
Totality, untouched by unbeing, hear us."
Then, all together, once again, in a unified voice, they call out.
"Fragments we are, yet you are One.
Father of the Fold, Weaver of the Aeon Thread.
Return now from Beyond the Edge.
From where Time has not yet dared to move.
We summon you, not as a servant...
But as the Last to judge the First.
Architect of Totality, come!"
Their weapons ignited one by one colors, forces, and concepts flaring outward until the space around us was lit brighter than any horizon, glowing far past what the eye could trace.
Then came a stillness. Not the hush of Pause— something far deeper. A silence that didn't freeze time but defined it. A presence that contained every Aspect yet belonged to none. A being who preceded the system the Architects swore by. The Law before Laws. The source that cradled the primordial force of Time across every Ontic Layer.
The light sharpened white, absolute searing even through my shut eyelids.
When it faded, I opened them, he was standing there.
A figure dressed entirely in white. Hair like falling snow, robes without a single crease, a cloak that seemed untouched by the world, a mask as blank and ancient as a forgotten god. The first Architect. The One Above All.
To be continued....