Calian stood in the middle of the room, spinning slowly, enjoying his work. He felt like a god in his own little world.
"Done for the first floor," he said with satisfaction.
However, his genius brain didn't stop there. "This is just inanimate objects," Calian thought, stroking his smooth chin. "Inanimate objects have a static time structure. What about something living? Something with a biological cycle?"
Curiosity led him to walk out toward the back door connected to the garden terrace. Out there, the garden was just a thicket of bushes. However, near the door, there was a large cracked stone pot. Inside, the remains of a dead rose plant were stuck.
The stem was dry, black, and brittle. No leaves, no life. This plant had been dead for years because no one watered it.
Calian knelt in front of the pot. The night wind hit his face, but he was too focused to care.
"The book said I can't bring back the dead if the soul is gone. But plants... plants are different. Traces of life still exist in the roots," he mumbled, analyzing. He touched the dry stem with the tip of his index finger.
This time, he knew he couldn't use normal Reversion. If he rewound time on a dead plant, he would just get a younger but still dead plant. He had to use another aspect of the Time Loop: Biological Age Manipulation (Rejuvenation).
"Come back to your glory days!" whispered Calian.
He closed his eyes, imagining the flow of life inside the dry stem being forcibly reversed. He pulled "age" from the plant.
The sensation was very different. If inanimate objects felt cold and stiff, living things felt warm and pulsating. Calian felt there was 'time' being stolen from the plant, and he returned it by force. There was a little resistance from nature, but Calian's will was stronger.
Slowly, the black color on the stem turned light brown, then fresh green. Broken thorns grew back, sharp and strong. Tiny leaves sprouted at a speed visible to the naked eye, bursting from the previously dead stem.
And finally, at the top of the stem, a flower bud appeared. The bud grew larger, its petals opening one by one in a mesmerizing time-lapse motion.
A blood-red rose bloomed perfectly before him. Fresh. Dewy. The sweet and strong scent of rose immediately filled the air.
Calian opened his eyes. His breath hitched. He touched the rose petal. Soft as velvet. Alive.
"I can do it..." Calian smiled, this time a genuine but slightly terrifying smile because of the implications. "I can manipulate biological age. I can make the old young."
His mind wandered wildly. If he could do this to a rose... could he do it to a human? to his mother? To himself? Immunity to Aging wasn't just a theory. It was real.
Suddenly, the corner of his eye caught movement.
A small mole rat ran across the stone terrace, perhaps disturbed by the human presence in its territory. The rat ran fast toward a crack in the wall.
Calian's instinct took over. He wanted to test one more ability. Self-defense capability.
He stretched out his left hand toward the running rat. His eyes narrowed in focus.
"Stasis."
Click.
The world seemed to stop at that specific point.
The rat froze in mid-air, right as it was jumping. Its front paws were raised, its tail stiff and straight behind. Not only the rat, but the dust kicked up by the rat's feet also stopped floating in the air, forming suspended motionless grains.
Calian stood up and walked closer. He crouched in front of the frozen rat.
The rat's eyes didn't blink. Its whiskers didn't twitch. Its heart, if Calian could hear it, surely also stopped beating between two beats. The creature was trapped in a time bubble where seconds did not proceed.
"Time stops completely for this object," analyzed Calian coldly. He dared himself to touch the rat's fur. It felt strange. Hard as a rock, immovable. "As long as I hold it, it is immortal in this freeze. No sword can penetrate it, and it also cannot attack me."
Calian snapped his fingers.
"Release."
The rat fell to the ground, continuing its panic run as if nothing happened, completely unaware that it had just lost eighteen seconds of its existence. The rat disappeared into the bushes.
Calian stood up again, looking at both his hands—hands deemed weak by his father, hands that couldn't hold a greatsword. He felt incredibly powerful. Adrenaline flooded his body, making him feel more alive than ever before.
He went back inside the now luxurious pavilion, closed the terrace door, and locked the night wind outside.
He walked to the red velvet sofa he had just 'fixed'. He sat there, leaning his back comfortably. He took the old leather-bound notebook he brought from his old room, dipped a quill into ink he had also restored to liquid, and started writing on the first clean page.
He wrote a big title there:
[WEST PAVILION JOURNAL: YEAR ONE]
"Day one," he mumbled while scratching the quill. "West Pavilion secured. Basic abilities: confirmed. Stamina limit: not yet found, seems energy is drawn from the time distortion itself. Combat potential: present."
He stopped writing for a moment, staring at the front window whose glass was now clear without stains. He could only see the pitch-black darkness illuminated by moonlight outside the pavilion.
"They are eating dinner now," Calian thought. The faces of his family flashed in his mind. "Father is probably scolding Brother Alaric about his sword posture being less than perfect. Mother is probably sitting quietly, smiling politely while holding back pain thinking about me. And my other siblings... they must be laughing, thinking I'm crying in fear in an old hut full of dust and ghosts."
Calian leaned back relaxedly, lifting his feet onto the shiny black wood coffee table. The smile on his face was no longer the cynical smile of a victim, but the calm smile of a predator who knows he is at the top of the food chain.
"Sleep tight, my dear family," he whispered to the luxurious silence of the night. "Enjoy your limited time. Because while you sleep and age, I will stay awake." he smiled as he remembered his mother's smile. "Mother, wait for me, I will definitely see you again."
He stared at the pile of books on the table. Books on war strategy, macroeconomics, imperial history, and human anatomy.
"I will clean this place, floor by floor, room by room. And when I'm done restoring this pavilion... I will start fixing my own fate."
Calian looked at the candle on the table starting to shorten from burning. With a casual snap of his fingers, he rewound time on the candle.
Whoosh.
The candle returned to being long, whole like new, its flame burning bright and steady.
"I have forever," Calian said, closing his eyes for a moment, enjoying the silence that now felt not like loneliness, but like the peace of a ruler in his fortress. "And I won't waste a single second of the freedom my mother gave me."
That night, in the no-longer-dusty West Pavilion, Calian did not sleep. He read. He learned. And occasionally, he rewound time on his candle so it would never burn out, letting the light of his knowledge shine eternally through the night, while the world outside slowly aged without realizing the birth of a time ruler.