There was once a time when gods walked among mortals—not as saviors, but as bystanders.
The world had splintered into three warring realms: the Human Dominion, the Demonic Abyss, and the Celestial Reach. Each race hungered for supremacy. Humans sought to conquer Heaven and Hell alike, wielding forbidden magic with arrogant precision. Demons unleashed corrupt enchantments to enslave all life. Angels, severed from the will of their absent gods, fell into silence and civil war.
Reality cracked.
Magic, once a flowing river of balance, became chaotic—violent and unstable. Spells collapsed mid-cast. Dimensions bled into each other. Time began to blur.
And while the world raged, seven witches, each born from a Sin, stood against the unraveling of existence. Among them, one towered above the rest.
She was known as the Witch of Envy.
Her true name was Elaria Veyne—a sorceress whose power transcended elemental laws. Where others summoned fire, she bent time. Where others cast illusions, she fractured fate. She did not crave power to destroy, but to restore.
When no one else dared challenge the chaos, she invented a spell forbidden even to the gods:
Chronoweave.A spell to stitch time itself back into order.
The witches gathered at the Sanctum of Balance, their sacred stronghold hovering between realms. Their plan: cast the Chronoweave, travel 2,000 years into the past, and prevent the war that had doomed reality.
But as they cast the spell—Elaria at the center, the others weaving their essence into hers—a ripple struck the continuum.
One witch faltered.
Wrath's conduit cracked, releasing a burst of quantum noise across the temporal lattice. In that moment of divine vulnerability, the God of Time, long silent, awakened in fury.
He struck.
Six witches fell in a blink, their bodies shattered or their souls scattered into temporal loops. Only Elaria stood—wounded but unyielding. With her last strength, she reflected his blow, casting him into a sealed dimensional fold.
The spell collapsed.
And Elaria fell through time…
…but not into the past.
The ground was cold beneath her cheek.
Not stone. Not soil. But some strange, smooth surface that pulsed faintly with light.
Elaria Veyne groaned, pushing herself upright. Her breath came in ragged gasps as she looked around—eyes wide with disbelief.
Where was she?
This wasn't the holy place where she and the other witches had cast the time spell. There was no altar. No divine aether. No chanting of the Seven.
Just glowing towers.Machines.A sky without stars.
Her spell—meant to take her two millennia into the past—had gone wrong.
The ritual site, the Seven Witches, the fractured magic, the moment the God of Time struck down the circle—it all flooded back in fragments. She had deflected the god's blow with everything she had left.
And now… she was here.
Alone.
The air smelled of oil, metal, and faint rot. She rose shakily, brushing dust from her tattered robes. Her fingers curled around her time compass—a magical relic fused with her soul. Its normally steady green glow now spun wildly, directionless.
"No ley lines… no resonance..." she whispered. "I'm not just in the wrong time. I'm in the wrong world."
A sharp whirring cut through the air—hoverbikes, speeding toward her.
She ducked into a shadowed alley, pressed flat against a metallic wall.
Then came the voices.
"Unregistered signal just blinked in. Sector 14.""Might be a rogue Synth or junk mage. Gear check ready?"
Four figures in sleek chrome armor emerged from the shadows—the Chrome Fangs. Their visors glowed crimson, masks shaped like silver hounds. One carried a plasma rifle; another flicked a monoblade between cybernetic fingers.
They weren't knights. They weren't demonspawn.
They were something worse.
Hunters.
One of them turned, scanning the alley with a wrist-mounted device. Elaria pressed herself against the wall. Her magical aura flickered faintly.
"Thermal anomaly—left side!"
She bolted.
She sprinted through rain-slick alleys and flickering corridors, heart hammering. Blasts from stun rifles crackled past her.
"Stop! On the ground!"
She rounded a corner—dead end.
A steel wall. A door sealed with glowing glyphs she didn't recognize. Her legs trembled. She reached for a barrier incantation—nothing. No mana. No ley.
"Come on…" she breathed. "Please…"
Nothing.
The footsteps grew louder.
"Hey! This way—hurry!"
A metal panel snapped open beside her. A girl with short black hair, dirty goggles, and a glowing wrist-device waved from a hidden hatch.
Elaria didn't think. She dove inside.
They dropped into a dim, abandoned metro tunnel lit by old bulbs and tech scraps. The girl sealed the hatch, breathing hard.
"You nearly got yourself vaporized."
Elaria leaned on the wall, heart pounding.
"You're not chipped," the girl added. "No ID tag. No tech implants. Where the hell did you come from?"
Elaria hesitated.
Her name felt like a relic. But she said it anyway.
"I'm… Elaria Veyne. A witch."
The girl blinked. "A what?"
Elaria held up her glowing compass. "I was supposed to return to my time. To stop a war. But something went wrong."
The girl eyed her robes. The device. The way she talked.
Then she offered her hand.
"Name's Maris Till. You're definitely not local. Lucky for you, I hate Chrome Fangs."
Elaria shook her hand.
And for the first time since awakening, something in her stilled.
Not hope.
But purpose.