The room was still.
Utterly… unnaturally still.
Lucian's body remained frozen on the couch, posture mid-turn, mouth slightly open as if about to speak. But he couldn't. The moment had stopped. No heartbeat. No breath. No thought. Only awareness—some primal, passive recognition of something wrong.
Nyssia stood, surrounded by unmoving space. The world had stopped, yet she could still feel. Her chest rose with shallow breaths, eyes wide in trembling confusion. Time had not just slowed—it had ceased.
Across the room, the angel stood in divine silence.
Her wings stretched with an ethereal glow—pure white, massive, the feathers seeming to hum with frozen particles of light. The robe she wore rippled like soft silk caught in a wind that no longer existed, a golden thread embedded across the edges. Her skin shone with soft radiance, and her eyes… no malice. Only calm. Only that disarming, godlike calm.
But something was off. Too calm. Too rehearsed.
"You are good, Nyssia," she said again, voice layered with thousands of echoes, both young and old. "You are the one I was searching for."
Nyssia tried to step back. She couldn't. The floor itself felt distant, unreal.
"Your world has paused… but you are untouched. That is rare."
The angel raised a hand. In her palm, the same crystal Nyssia had picked up earlier hovered—now cracked open like an egg, pulsing with a deep red light inside.
"A sliver of my curse… no, my gift. One meant for a soul capable of holding fate."
The crystal split fully.
A thread of violet energy snaked out, wrapping around Nyssia's body like a glowing rope of smoke. She gasped, the sensation searing through her skin—not pain, not heat, but transcendence. Her soul was being rewritten.
She fell to her knees.
"W-What… what is this—?!"
The angel only smiled.
And with that, the energy surged into Nyssia's chest—her eyes snapped wide as a wave of pressure crushed into her skull.
Her right eye—glowed. A deep violet overtook it. The sclera blackened. Clock digits burned themselves into the iris like rings of fate, and a single hand began ticking across it—tick... tick... tick—even in this frozen moment.
Her left eye remained untouched—blue, innocent.
But nothing about her soul was innocent anymore.
Seconds later, the spell shattered.
The world resumed—like a gasp from a drowned man. Air moved. The TV flickered. A bird outside flapped past the window.
Lucian jolted forward as if nothing had happened, holding a glass of water.
"Are you okay my honey"? he blinked. "You okay? You zoned out for a second."
Nyssia stood in the middle of the room, trembling.
Yeah," she said softly, touching the side of her head. "Just… tired, maybe."
She looked at Lucian.
He hadn't seen it. He hadn't felt it. He didn't know what she had just become.
The angel… was gone.
And Nyssia? She was no longer entirely human. Not in soul.