The world felt wrong.
Haruto wasn't moving. Not even breathing.
Beneath him, the icy concrete of the alley radiated a strange warmth, as if the air had frozen mid-beat. In front of him, a man — no, a thing — was staring at him with eyes glowing with pure temporality.
- Kairos.
- The Concept of Time.
And it saw him.
Haruto, gasping, his clothes torn from the fall, stared at the figure that was neither real nor illusory, but a phenomenon. An anomaly. A god bent into human form.
> "Tsk… A Balance Dotai? Now this… is a surprise."
Kairos's murmur cut through the space like a damp blade. His gaze had stopped on Haruto's bare chest, on the strange mark: a cracked scale, etched like a living tattoo, pulsing with a dull light.
Why him? Why now?
Why this?
I just wanted to go home. Eat. Sleep.
A wave resonated. Space began to ripple, as if the walls, the ground, the air itself were reassessing their place in the weave of the world.
Haruto scrambled backward on all fours, panicked. He wanted to flee. But his legs no longer responded.
Then he heard it — A word.
A cosmic word.
A sound that echoed in his bones more than in his ears.
"WAIT."
And everything stopped.
The wind died. Leaves froze mid-fall. A cat in a dumpster, suspended in mid-air.
The world had quite literally obeyed.
Kairos's eyes were now luminescent, one eye looked like a reversed clock, and the other one had the pupil replaced by a "pause" logo.
He stepped forward slowly.
Haruto, still on the ground, felt a wave of vertigo. His breath became ragged. He wanted to speak. To scream. But his throat was dry.
> "W-Who are you...? What are you...?"
No immediate answer. Kairos crouched slowly, examining the mark. He placed two fingers near the cracked scale. A silence settled — heavy, cosmic. Then:
>"You shouldn't exist."
His voice was calm. But in that stillness, Haruto sensed a deep fear. As if this god of time was talking to himself, trying to stay composed.
> "You're not supposed to see me. To feel me. Your presence... breaks the rules."
Haruto froze. He wanted to understand. But it was too much. Far too much.
•••
[Flash.]
He was six. A half-finished puzzle in front of him. A missing piece. He was crying.
His mother, again, gentle and tired, knelt down and stroked his hair.
"Don't worry. Sometimes, it's better when things don't fit perfectly."
•••
[Back to the present.]
Kairos was still touching the mark.
Suddenly, he looked up.
"You're not just a deviation. You are… balance itself. The one thing the Founder forbade. The one thing that can't be allowed to tip."
Haruto blinked. He didn't have the strength to understand, but he knew. He felt it.He was a threat. To himself. To others. To everything.
Kairos stood abruptly, stepping back. A muted wave shook the air. His expression was a mix of fear, fascination, and a kind of… fatalistic respect.
"The world had rules. You break them simply by being."
He raised his right hand.
From his fingers came a faint silvery glow, almost invisible. A spectral energy formed.
Then, slowly, a translucent thread emerged from his palm and linked to his own temple, as if he were downloading a thought, or executing code.
The next instant, a light crystallized on Haruto's chest.
An hourglass, just like Kairos's Dotai itself.
A small cosmic engraving, embedded at the center of the fractured balance (Haruto's Dotai). Like a temporal lock.
"I'm not going to erase you. Not yet. Because I want to see… what happens when balance tips the world off its axis."
He placed his hand on the Dotai, very slowly.
"So keep this stable. Or we're all dead."
The hourglass shone one last time, then Kairos vanished in a breath. The world resumed. The air vibrated. The cat dropped. The cosmic moment closed like a fading dream.
Haruto tried to stand.
But no.
He felt a pulse beneath his skin. The Dotai was throbbing. And then…
Blackness.
Collapse.
Unconsciousness.
•••
[END OF CHAPTER 3]
> And that's it. The long journey of Haruto starts now.