The world was quiet.
Too quiet.
Not the comfortable silence of a peaceful morning, or the hushed anticipation before dawn. This was different. Heavier. Like the air itself was holding its breath, waiting for something terrible to finish happening.
Snow drifted across the old redwood clearing in lazy spirals, each flake falling with deliberate slowness—almost unnaturally so. As if time itself hesitated before allowing them to touch the ground. As if even the basic physics of falling had become uncertain, negotiable, subject to forces that shouldn't exist.
The cabin sat beneath the towering trees, restored to the shape it had held years ago through means Lea still didn't fully understand. From the outside, it looked peaceful. Serene, even. Smoke curled from the chimney in a thin, steady line. Light glowed warm through frosted windows.
But the air around it hummed.
Not audibly—not quite. But there was a pressure, a vibration at the edge of perception. Something ancient and unsettled, like standing too close to a sleeping giant and feeling its breath against your skin.
Inside, Retro lay unmoving.
Lea had placed him on the bed with as much care as she could manage, her hands shaking the entire time. Arranging his limbs so he looked comfortable rather than collapsed. Pulling a blanket over him even though he didn't seem to feel cold anymore.
Making him look like he was sleeping rather than... whatever this was.
His body rested where she'd left him, but something about him felt wrong. Diminished. Like a painting where someone had carefully erased several layers, leaving only the outline of what used to be.
His aura flickered around him—barely visible, struggling. A candle fighting a storm it couldn't possibly win. The light pulsed weakly, irregularly, threatening to go out entirely with each passing moment.
His breaths came shallow and far apart. Too far apart. Lea had counted the seconds between them more times than she cared to admit, panic spiking each time the interval stretched just a bit longer.
His eyes—usually sharp, alert, alive with barely contained power—remained closed in a silence too deep to be called sleep.
This wasn't rest.
This was something else.
Gaia's doing. A forced stillness. A sealed rest.
A cage.
Lea sat at the bedside, knees pulled tight to her chest.
She hadn't moved in hours. Hadn't eaten. Hadn't done anything except sit and watch and hope—desperately, irrationally hope—that he would wake up on his own.
That she wouldn't have to face whatever came next alone.
Her trembling had finally faded as exhaustion settled into her bones, but her eyes remained red and swollen. Wide. Haunted by images she couldn't unsee—visions the fractured time had forced into her mind.
Rose dying in Retro's arms. The moment he broke. The rage that nearly destroyed everything.
She couldn't shake them.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw blood on grass. Heard that terrible scream. Felt the weight of grief that wasn't hers but had been forced into her anyway.
The house still felt cold despite the fire.
The world still felt wrong despite looking normal.
And Retro still wouldn't wake up.
Lea looked at him—really looked—for what must have been the hundredth time. Searching his face for any sign of change. Any flicker of awareness. Any indication that he was still in there somewhere, fighting to come back.
She wanted—needed—to hear him say "I'm here" just once more.
Just once would be enough to prove this wasn't permanent. That she hadn't lost him to something she couldn't fight or understand.
But he didn't wake.
The fire crackled in the corner, wood popping and settling. Shadows danced across the walls in familiar patterns. Outside, the wind whispered through the redwoods with a sound like distant voices.
The hours crept toward dawn with painful slowness.
Finally—unable to sit still any longer, unable to keep staring at his too-still face—Lea stood.
Her legs protested, stiff from sitting in the same position for so long. She stretched carefully, feeling joints pop, then moved toward the window.
She needed to see something else. Needed to look at the world and remember it was still there, still real, still continuing despite everything.
Halfway across the room—
Retro's fingers twitched.
Just barely.
A tiny movement, easy to miss. But in the stillness of the cabin, it might as well have been thunder.
Lea spun around, hope surging through her chest so powerfully it hurt.
"Dad?"
The word came out strangled, desperate.
But Retro didn't wake.
His eyes remained closed. His breathing stayed shallow. His body lay exactly as still as before.
Only—
Something had changed.
The air shifted. The pressure around him intensified. His aura flickered more violently, pulsing with colors that shouldn't exist.
Lea took a hesitant step closer, not sure whether to feel hopeful or terrified.
Retro didn't wake.
But the world inside his mind shifted.
Retro opened his eyes to impossibility.
He stood beneath a sky of fractured moons—at least a dozen of them, maybe more. Each one cracked like dropped porcelain. Each one bleeding silver light across the landscape below in streams that defied direction, flowing sideways and upward as often as down.
The ground beneath his feet wasn't quite solid. It had the consistency of packed sand, but the color kept changing—gray to black to something that hurt to look at directly.
The air shimmered like heat waves over summer pavement, but cold radiated from every surface. Broken memories drifted through the space like debris in water—images with no context, sounds with no source, feelings divorced from the moments that created them.
Retro recognized this place immediately.
And hated it just as quickly.
This was where time went to die. Where moments that couldn't exist anywhere else came to rot. Where causality broke down and gave up trying to make sense.
He'd been here before, though he couldn't remember when. The memory of being here existed in his mind as a feeling rather than an event—the same way you might remember a nightmare's emotional impact without being able to recall specific details.
Retro clenched his fists, feeling his nails dig into his palms.
"Gaia." His voice came out flat. Angry. "You didn't have to trap me here."
No answer.
Only wind—if it could be called wind. More like the movement of air with no particular direction, swirling in patterns that made his eyes hurt trying to follow.
The ground rippled beneath his feet, the surface warping like liquid for a moment before settling back into something approximating solidity.
Old shapes began to emerge from the warping—echoes of years long past. The silhouettes of forests he'd walked through decades ago. Mountains he'd climbed. Battlefields he'd rather forget.
And faces.
Familiar faces, flickering in and out of existence like failing projections.
Atlas as a child, laughing at something long forgotten.
Nexus training with wooden swords, so young and determined.
Lilly before the corruption, smiling that gentle smile.
And others. So many others. Friends and enemies and people whose names he'd lost to time but whose faces remained burned into memory.
Then the world stilled.
The rippling stopped. The images froze mid-flicker. Even the strange wind died away to nothing.
Silence pressed in from all sides—not the absence of sound, but something more oppressive. Like the moment before a predator strikes.
A voice drifted through the stillness—soft as morning fog, gentle as rain on leaves.
"Retro."
His breath froze in his lungs.
Everything inside him seized up at once. Muscles locking. Heart stuttering. Mind going blank with a mix of hope and horror he couldn't begin to untangle.
He knew that voice.
God, he knew that voice.
Slowly—so slowly it hurt—he turned.
She stood there.
Rose.
His first wife. The woman whose death had destroyed him once before. The woman whose memory he'd tried to bury so deep it could never surface again.
She looked exactly as he remembered. Brown hair catching light that shouldn't exist here. Eyes warm and knowing. Wearing the simple dress she'd loved, the blue one with small flowers embroidered along the hem.
Her smile was small. Sad. Understanding in a way that made his chest ache.
Everything inside Retro twisted with agony so sharp he nearly collapsed from the force of it.
He shook his head once—a desperate, instinctive denial.
"No..." The word came out broken. "No, this isn't real."
Rose stepped closer, her bare feet making no sound against the impossible ground. She raised one hand slowly, as if to touch his cheek, giving him time to pull away if he wanted to.
"Of course it isn't."
Her voice carried the same warmth he remembered. The same gentle certainty.
"But I am."
Retro's knees threatened to give out.
The pain of seeing her again—really seeing her, not just glimpsing her face in memories or dreams—was sharp and suffocating. Like breathing glass. Like drowning in air.
Yet somehow gentle too. Like old memories resurfacing from beneath dark water. Like wounds being reopened with care rather than violence.
"You're lost in time, Retro."
Rose's hand hovered near his face but didn't quite touch. Waiting for permission he couldn't give.
"And time is cruel to those who fight it."
The barren plain shifted again.
Colors bled through the gray—red and brown and the sick yellow of old bruises.
Blood appeared on the ground in spreading pools.
Steel glinted in nonexistent light.
A battlefield materialized around them—the one from that day. The day everything ended.
The moment she died.
Retro's heart hammered against his ribs so hard it hurt. His vision blurred at the edges. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to fight, to do anything but stand here and watch this again.
He turned away sharply, fists tightening until blood welled between his knuckles. The pain helped—gave him something to focus on besides the agony tearing through his chest.
"I can't..." His voice came out hoarse, barely recognizable. "I can't go through this again."
"You're not meant to relive it."
Rose's voice remained gentle. Patient. Like speaking to a frightened animal.
"Only to face the pieces you buried."
He trembled.
The grief he'd sealed away—carefully, methodically, with all the power at his disposal—rose like a tsunami. A roaring tide of emotion he'd spent centuries trying to contain.
It crashed over him with the force of something that had been compressed too long. Too tightly. Until it couldn't be held back anymore.
"You loved me."
Rose spoke each word carefully, giving them weight.
"You lost me."
A pause that stretched.
"But you lived, Retro... you lived."
His voice broke when he finally responded.
"I wasn't ready to lose you."
"You never were."
Rose stepped closer—close enough now that he could feel her warmth. Real warmth, impossibly real in this impossible place. Warmth he hadn't felt in decades.
Warmth he'd convinced himself he'd never feel again.
"No one ever is."
She placed a hand on his chest, right over his heart. He could feel the pressure of her palm, gentle and steady.
"Your rage shook the world tonight."
Her voice carried no judgment. Only observation. Only truth.
"Your pain reached everyone you love. They felt you breaking from miles away. Across continents. They're coming for you now, terrified of what they'll find."
Retro swallowed hard, shame adding itself to the crushing weight of everything else.
He'd always prided himself on control. On being strong enough to carry his burdens without letting them touch the people around him.
And tonight he'd failed.
Tonight everyone he cared about had felt him fall apart.
The world flickered around them.
The sky trembled and cracked further. Time warped like ripples spreading across water from a stone's impact.
"You must wake up."
Rose's hand began to fade—not suddenly, but gradually. Becoming translucent at the edges, losing solidity with each passing second.
"Lea needs you."
Her voice grew distant, like she was speaking from the far end of a long tunnel.
"Lilly needs you."
Further still. Harder to hear now.
"And Retro... the world needs you whole."
His breath hitched.
Panic surged through him—the desperate, irrational fear of losing her again. Even though this wasn't real. Even though she'd been gone for decades. Even though he knew better.
"Rose—wait—!"
He reached for her, hand grasping at air that suddenly felt too thin.
She was already fading, her form becoming transparent. But her smile remained—sad and gentle and final.
"Live again."
Her voice was barely a whisper now.
"Not for me."
Even quieter.
"For them."
And then—so soft he almost missed it:
"And this time... please don't carry it alone."
Retro's hand closed on nothing.
The moment shattered like glass under a hammer.
Retro exhaled sharply and shot upright in the bed.
The transition was violent—nonexistent one moment, hyperaware the next. His eyes snapped open wide, pupils dilated, breath coming in ragged gasps.
For several seconds he didn't know where he was. Didn't recognize the cabin or the firelight or the smell of pine and old wood.
All he could see was Rose fading. All he could feel was that terrible moment of losing her again.
Across the room, Lea jerked awake from where she'd dozed on the floor.
She'd finally given in to exhaustion sometime in the last hour, curling up on the wooden boards rather than risk missing any change if she left to find proper rest.
Now she scrambled to her feet, nearly tripping over her own tail in her haste.
"Dad?!"
The word came out high and desperate.
Retro's hand rose trembling to his face.
His fingers came away wet.
Tears.
Real ones.
He stared at the moisture on his fingertips like he'd never seen such a thing before. Like his body had done something impossible.
He didn't cry often. Hadn't cried in years—decades, maybe. Had learned long ago that tears solved nothing, changed nothing, helped nothing.
But tonight...
Tonight it broke him open.
The dam he'd built so carefully, reinforced over centuries, maintained with rigid discipline—
It cracked.
And everything he'd been holding back came pouring through.
He looked at Lea, who stood frozen halfway across the room. Staring at him with worry and relief tangled together so tightly they were indistinguishable.
Her ears were pressed flat against her skull. Her tail hung low. Her eyes were red from crying, from exhaustion, from watching him lie still for hours with no way to help.
"Hey, kiddo."
His voice came out raw. Rough like sandpaper. But alive. Conscious. Here.
Lea made a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh.
Then she threw herself across the room and into his chest, wrapping her arms around him with desperate strength. Burying her face against his shoulder. Holding on like he might disappear if she let go.
Retro held her just as tightly.
One arm around her back, one hand cradling the back of her head. Feeling her shake against him. Feeling his own body trembling in response.
They stayed like that for a long time.
Not speaking. Not moving. Just holding on.
The fire crackled softly in the background. The wind whispered through the trees outside. Snow continued its slow, uncertain fall.
The world was silent again.
But Retro knew now—
Time hadn't forgotten what happened.
It had simply whispered.
And the whispers were getting louder.
Retro held Lea for several long minutes after waking, letting his breathing steady, his heartbeat slow.
But even as his body calmed, something in his chest felt wrong.
Empty.
Like someone had carved out a piece of him while he slept and left only hollow space behind.
He exhaled slowly—shakily—then gently pulled back from Lea's embrace.
"Kiddo..."
His voice still sounded rough, but more controlled now. More like himself.
"Something's off."
Lea wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, looking up at him with confusion replacing the relief.
"What do you mean?" Her voice carried an edge of new worry. "Are you hurt? Did something—did Gaia do something else?"
Retro shook his head, his brow furrowing deeply.
Confusion. Concern. And beneath both—the first stirrings of something that might have been fear.
He raised his hand slowly, opening his palm flat.
Then he reached for his power.
It should have been automatic. Effortless. Like breathing or blinking—something so fundamental he never had to think about it.
He called for the familiar hum of mana flowing through his body. The weight of his aura settling around him like a second skin. The responsive pull of magic waiting to be shaped.
Nothing happened.
No warmth flooding through his veins. No tingling at his fingertips. No sense of vast power coiled and ready just beneath the surface.
Just silence.
Complete and absolute.
Retro stared at his hand, not quite believing what wasn't happening.
He tried again—harder this time. Reaching deeper, pulling harder. The kind of call that normally made the air vibrate, made loose objects rattle, made people nearby feel pressure against their skin.
Still nothing.
Not even an echo. Not even a flicker.
His expression tightened, jaw clenching.
"I can't feel my magic."
The words came out flat. Emotionless. But his eyes betrayed him—widening slightly, showing the shock he was trying to suppress.
Lea's ears shot upright in alarm.
Her tail went rigid behind her, the fur bristling involuntarily.
"W-What?" She stepped closer, hands half-raised like she wanted to reach for him but didn't know how to help. "Dad, that's not... that's not possible. You always have magic. Always."
She said it with the certainty of someone stating an absolute truth. The sky is blue. Water is wet. Retro has magic.
Some things were just facts about how the universe worked.
Retro didn't answer right away.
He kept staring at his hand like it belonged to someone else. Like this limb attached to his body was a foreign object he'd never seen before.
He flexed his fingers slowly. Curled them into a fist. Opened them again.
Searching for even the smallest spark. The faintest trace of the power that had defined him for longer than most civilizations had existed.
Nothing.
"My aura..." His voice came out quiet. Unsettled in a way Lea had never heard before. "It's gone."
"Gone...?"
Lea's voice cracked on the word.
"Like completely?"
Retro's jaw tightened further. Muscles jumping under his skin.
"I can't even feel the threads of it." He spoke slowly, each word measured. Like he was trying to convince himself this was really happening. "It's like someone cut me out of the world's flow entirely."
Lea's breath quickened.
Her eyes darted between his face and his hand, looking for any sign this was a joke or a mistake or something that could be fixed easily.
Finding nothing reassuring.
"Dad—" Her voice went high and thin. "What do we do?"
Retro turned toward her, and for a moment—just a moment—she saw it.
Real fear in his eyes.
Not the controlled concern he showed when situations were dangerous. Not the careful wariness he maintained during battles.
Actual fear.
The kind that came from being vulnerable in ways you'd forgotten were possible.
Then he schooled his expression, forcing calm into his features even though his eyes still gave him away.
He placed a hand on her shoulder—solid, steady, warm.
"For now..." He kept his voice level through obvious effort. "We don't panic."
Lea swallowed hard, her throat clicking.
"You're—" She could barely get the words out. "You're powerless. Completely powerless..."
The statement hung between them.
Retro let out a breath that might have been a laugh if there'd been any humor in it.
"Feels weird, doesn't it?"
But Lea didn't laugh.
Didn't smile.
Her eyes glistened with tears that hadn't quite started falling.
"What if something attacks us again?" The words tumbled out faster and faster. "What if Phantom comes back? What if—what if Mom—or that thing that looked like her—shows up and—"
Her voice cracked completely.
The scenarios piled up in her mind, each one worse than the last. Each one ending with her father helpless and her too weak to protect him.
Retro pulled her close, wrapping both arms around her.
Steady. Firm. Grounding.
"Hey. Hey."
His voice dropped to that particular tone—the one he used when she was young and afraid of storms or shadows or things in the dark.
"Look at me."
Lea tilted her head up, trembling against him.
Retro's voice softened, even stripped of the power that usually backed it.
"I may not have magic right now."
Each word deliberate. Certain.
"But I'm still me."
He squeezed her shoulders gently.
"And I'll protect you with whatever I've got left. Sword or no sword. Power or no power."
His eyes held hers, refusing to let her look away.
"I've survived wars, kiddo. Fought things that would make Phantom look like a minor inconvenience. And I did it before I was this powerful."
A slight pause.
"I can do it again."
Lea bit her lip hard, tears finally spilling over.
Retro continued, his voice taking on that quiet steel she knew so well:
"I'll get my magic back. We'll figure out what happened and fix it."
Confidence he might not entirely feel, but delivered with enough conviction to be almost believable.
"But until then... we stay smart. We stay quiet. And we stay together."
He ruffled her hair—that familiar gesture that meant I'm here, you're safe, we're okay.
Lea nodded weakly, managing a tiny smile despite everything.
"Together," she repeated.
Her voice was small but steadier.
Retro returned the smile, letting warmth show through the exhaustion.
But when he glanced down at his hand one more time—
The smile faded.
His magic wasn't just weakened. Wasn't suppressed or temporarily blocked.
It was gone.
Completely absent, like it had never existed at all.
Like something had reached into him and pulled out the very thing that made him what he was. Removed him from the world's flow of power as easily as deleting a single line from a book.
And without his magic—
Without his spectral sword—
Without his aura or his abilities or any of the tools he'd relied on for centuries—
He was vulnerable in ways he hadn't been since he was young and mortal and afraid.
He looked at Lea, still seeking comfort in his arms.
And he wondered how long he could keep pretending he wasn't terrified.
Retro sat on the edge of the bed after Lea finally pulled away, needing space to process but not wanting to leave his side.
She busied herself with the fire, adding wood that didn't really need adding. Giving him privacy while staying close enough to help if something went wrong.
He stared at his hands in his lap.
Turned them over slowly. Examined the lines in his palms, the scars across his knuckles, the calluses from decades of weapon work.
They looked the same as always.
But they felt wrong.
Empty.
Like wearing gloves that were supposed to be there but weren't.
He tried calling his magic again—smaller this time, more careful. Just trying to light a spark at his fingertip. The simplest exercise, something a novice could do on their first day of training.
Nothing.
Not even the faintest warmth.
The absence was so complete it was almost physical. A void where something essential should have been.
Retro closed his fists slowly.
"This is what normal people feel like," he murmured.
Not really talking to Lea. Just thinking out loud.
She glanced over from the fireplace, uncertain whether to respond.
"Every day," he continued quietly. "No safety net. No instant defense. Just... flesh and bone and hope nothing goes wrong."
A pause.
"I'd forgotten."
Lea moved closer, wrapping her arms around herself.
"When did you first have magic?" she asked softly. "Can you remember?"
Retro thought about it.
Searched back through memories that stretched further than most civilizations' recorded histories.
"I was... young. Maybe twelve?" The numbers felt meaningless when you'd lived this long. "It came during a fight. Something was attacking our village and I just... reached for it. And it was there."
He flexed his fingers.
"It's been there ever since. For so long I stopped thinking about what it would be like if it wasn't."
"How did you fight before that?" Lea asked. "When you were just... normal?"
Retro almost smiled.
"Carefully. Cleverly. With a lot more running away than I'd like to admit."
He looked up at her.
"I was terrified most of the time. Trying to pretend I wasn't. Trying to be brave for Atlas because he was even younger and more scared."
A beat.
"I'd gotten very good at appearing confident while being absolutely certain I was about to die."
Lea sat beside him, her tail curling around to rest against his leg.
"You can do it again," she said quietly. "The clever part. The careful part. The surviving part."
Retro put an arm around her shoulders.
"Yeah," he said.
But his voice carried doubt he couldn't quite hide.
Because clever and careful only got you so far when things like Phantom existed. When god-touched monsters hunted you. When reality itself was breaking down.
And he was so very tired.
Outside, the snow continued falling.
And somewhere in the distance—too far to hear but close enough to matter—
Others were coming.
Following the echo of his breaking.
Coming to help, or witness, or pick up whatever pieces remained.
Time would tell which.