The journey to the school was quick but tense. The four of them—Null, Kai, Ashley, and the newly recruited Sophie White—moved with the hushed urgency of soldiers crossing enemy lines. The weight of the mission had completely smothered the last of Fang's crude humor.
The school grounds were deserted, feeling more like a colossal, empty fortress than a center of learning. Null focused on the faint, erratic pulse he felt thrumming beneath the ground—the fractured power of another Prime Stone.
"It's here," Null stated, his eyes narrowing. "It's weak, hiding... caged."
Sophie confirmed it, a green glow briefly infusing her fingertip. "The distortion is deep inside. The main gym. It is sealed."
They found an unlocked side door and moved through the dark, cold hallway, the silence intensifying as they approached the gymnasium doors.
Null kicked the doors open.
The scene was instantly confusing, defying logic and physics. In the center of the basketball court stood a student, a young boy with his back to them, perfectly still. The world around him was frozen. A basketball, mid-bounce, was suspended in the air. Dust motes were held motionless, glinting like tiny, trapped stars. The boy himself was trapped in an impossible, contradictory stutter of movement, caught in an infinite, repeating micro-second. The air around him hummed with the agonizing, warped energy of the Time Prime Stone.
"He's stuck," Null breathed, recognizing the catastrophic temporal nightmare. "He's trapped in a single moment."
Before anyone could move, a dark, smoky tendril suddenly snaked out from the corner of the gym ceiling, moving unnaturally fast. It cut through the time-frozen space as easily as Null's shadow power had moved through Sophie's mind.
It was an Echo.
The shadowy tendril shot toward the boy's stomach, aiming for the Prime Stone orb beneath his skin, intending to destroy the vessel and claim the power.
"No, you don't!" Null roared, charging forward, his hands crackling with raw, crimson energy. He had saved one ally; he would not lose another.
TheAnchor Wakes
Meanwhile, miles away at the hospital, the quiet in the clinic room finally broke.
Sooji's eyes fluttered open. The exhaustion was still profound, but the suffocating darkness was gone. She was alive. The first thing she saw was the familiar, exasperated face of Fang, who was slumped in a chair, dozing, before snapping awake the moment she stirred.
"Well, it's about time, Sleeping Beauty," Fang grumbled, though his relief was palpable. "The king and his loyal sidekicks abandoned you for a field trip, but I stayed to watch the anchor."
Sooji managed a weak smile. "Where's Null?"
"On a mission. Heard a Prime Stone user was turning the school gym into a bad sci-fi movie set," Fang replied, then looked around the room.
"Where's Lumina? That tiny white menace should be raising hell that you're awake."
Sooji gently placed a hand over her chest, right above her heart. "She's... she's here."
Fang blinked. "Inside you? Why?"
"When I passed out, my heart rate... it was too fast," Sooji explained, her voice still thin. "The wound was bad. Lumina is... sleeping in my heart right now. She's trying to regulate my rhythm, keep me stabilized. She's slowing everything down, using her own energy. I can't move much, but I'm stable. I have to stay here for a little longer until she's done."
Fang stared at her, the usual mockery gone, replaced by a deep respect. "The anchor doesn't just steady the power. She stabilizes the king's entire realm. Got it. I'll pass the word on to Null... somehow."
Interception
Back at the school gym, the dark Echo was only feet away from the frozen boy. Null launched himself into the air, manifesting two massive claws of solid shadow from his hands.
He slammed his shadow claws directly into the advancing smoky tendril. The impact was deafening—a soundless shockwave of pure energy that vibrated across the time-warped space. The Echo's tendril recoiled instantly, snapping back toward the ceiling, but not before Null caught a glimpse of its core: a frantic, pulsating green orb of energy, surrounded by dark smoke.
The Echo was fast, its movements impossibly fluid, but Null was faster, propelled by the terror of the desolate future he had witnessed. He landed between the Echo and the time-trapped boy, his golden eyes blazing with the fierce light of the Unwritten King.
"You won't touch him," Null stated, his voice ringing with absolute authority.
The Echo didn't speak.(as if it can)It simply solidified, becoming a towering, humanoid shape of pure shadow and dark green light, its form menacing and silent. The time-trapped boy remained stuck in his agonizing loop, his fate hanging on the outcome of the battle taking place in the fractured timeline around him.
The air in the gymnasium was suffocating, a bizarre mixture of total stillness and vibrating, unstable power. Null stood rooted to the spot, his shadow claws manifested and ready. Before him, the Echo solidified into a towering figure of swirling dark green and black shadow—a fragment of his own fragmented power.
The Echo didn't use brute force. It used its intrinsic ability. A silent wave of temporal energy radiated outward, and suddenly, the attack Null was about to launch stuttered. His feet lifted off the ground, then snapped back down an instant later. His shadow claws flickered, almost materializing, then retreated. Null wasn't moving in real-time; he was being dragged through a series of micro-loops, unable to commit to an action.
This is mine. This is my power, Null realized, the knowledge flooding him with confusing clarity. This Echo is Time itself.
"Ashley! Kai! Now!" Null yelled, the word stretching and warping as his speech was also caught in the temporal stutter.
Kai reacted instantly. Air manipulation was one of the few things that could ignore physical mass. He unleashed a focused jet of super-compressed air—a miniature sonic boom—aimed directly at the Echo's shadowy mass. The blast hit, not with sound, but with pure kinetic energy, momentarily destabilizing the Echo's form.
The green orb flickered violently.
The Echo shrieked—a sound that, unlike Null's, was painfully clear—and it recoiled, momentarily breaking its hold on Null.
"I need a clear shot at its core!" Null shouted, finally able to move fluidly. "Ashley, cover the boy!"
Ashley immediately sprinted toward the trapped student, erecting a thick, shimmering blue energy dome around him. The dome wouldn't break the time loop, but it would protect the boy's
defenseless body from the Echo's destructive attack.
Now it was Sophie's turn. She was the only one who hadn't attacked yet, standing quietly near the entrance. She knelt, placing both hands flat on the polished wooden floor. Her eyes closed, and the floor beneath her hands began to glow with a deep, earthy green.
"Earth! Lock it down!" Null commanded, slamming his shadow claws into the Echo's midsection, trying to hold it still despite the disorienting temporal fluctuations.
Sophie channeled her power not into brute force, but into anchoring. Thick, stony tendrils erupted from the floor, coiling around the Echo's shadowy legs. The Earth Prime Stone energy, the essence of constancy, sought to nail the chaotic Time Echo to a single moment.
The Echo thrashed, generating chaotic time-waves that slammed into the walls. Null grunted, pushing his full shadow power into the Echo,
using Darkness to restrain the Time fragment of his own soul.
"It's too strong, Null!" Kai yelled, struggling to use air to push the Echo away from the center.
"No, it's not!" Sophie cried out, her voice strained. She focused on accelerating the growth of the stone tendrils, thickening them into immense granite pillars, locking the Echo in place.
Null saw his chance. The Echo was locked down, and the green core was exposed, pulsing with desperate speed. He channeled the full, crimson fury of his Prime Stone into his shadow hand. This was the moment of nullification.
He slammed his hand through the Echo's shadow mass, aiming directly for the green orb.
CRACK!
The sound was not loud, but absolute. The green orb shattered, and the brilliant motes of light did not rush to the trapped boy, but violently converged on Null.
A cascade of foreign memories—complex temporal equations, the dizzying sensation of skipping between seconds, and the absolute command over the flow of moments—slammed into Null's consciousness. He saw a flash of a massive, elaborate chronometer, its gears turning not with precision, but with the raw power of a cosmic engine. He knew, with sudden and terrifying certainty, that Time was one of his original powers.
The dark shadow mass of the Echo vaporized instantly. The memory flash receded, leaving Null gasping, his own body trembling with the absorption of his lost power fragment.
The moment the Echo was destroyed, the time loop broke. The suspended basketball slammed down, bouncing with a loud thump! The air rushed back to fill the void, and the time-trapped boy collapsed fully to the floor, panting.
Ashley immediately dropped her barrier and rushed to his side. Kai followed, checking his pulse.
Null stood over the boy, exhausted but victorious. He looked at Sophie, and she met his gaze with a mixture of awe and fear.
The boy stirred, his eyes opening. He looked utterly terrified and utterly confused.
"Where... where am I?" he whispered.
"The gym," Null said, his voice husky from the psychic strain, his own mind reeling from the torrent of new memories. "You're safe now. You're a Prime Stone user, and we're here to help you."
Null knew they had to move.
They had just defeated an Echo and confirmed his terrifying connection to the fragments of power roaming the world. They needed to secure their newest recruit, the terrified boy whose uncontrolled power had caused the temporal catastrophe.
End of chapter 48
Bye