The room darkened the moment the quest window appeared.
Chakra blinked, the soft glow of the floating blue text reflecting in his widened eyes. The air grew heavy — not with danger, but with something far older, far deeper.
[Urgent Quest: Purification of the Cursed Artifact — Fragment of Vetala]
Difficulty: ???
Description:
You have obtained an artifact imbued with the soul fragment of Vetala — the Shadow Between Life and Death. To purify it, you must witness and endure the memory that birthed this curse.
Warning:
The user will experience Vetala's memory as if it were their own.
Failure to maintain consciousness will result in the artifact possessing your body.
Objective:
• Witness Vetala's Memory.
• Resist Possession.
• Purify the Remaining Energy of the Fragment.
Reward: Unknown
"Vetala…" Chakra murmured, his voice barely audible. "The name feels… old."
As the last word left his lips, the world around him twisted. His room dissolved into ash and light, sucked into a void that pulsed with a rhythm slower than time itself.
For a moment, he felt his body disintegrate — then reform, not as Chakra, but as something else.
The Memory of Vetala
He stood in a forgotten world — a barren wasteland under a crimson sky. The air was thick with rot and despair. In the distance, temples lay broken, their idols desecrated.
And there, amidst the ruins, he saw himself.
No — not himself. Another being. A figure draped in decaying robes, with skin pale as moonlight and eyes like dying embers. The man — Vetala — sat before a small, lifeless child. His trembling hand reached out to touch the child's face, but his fingers passed through as if through smoke.
"Once… I wished to understand death," Vetala whispered, his voice trembling with guilt.
"And in doing so… I killed what I loved most."
Pain rippled through Chakra's chest — not his own, but Vetala's. The sorrow was suffocating, ancient. Memories poured into him like floodwater — images of laughter, study, obsession, death, and resurrection. The day Vetala defied the cycle of life… the day he bound his soul to decay.
He had wanted to bring his child back.
Instead, he had become a monster that could never die.
As the memory deepened, the ground beneath Chakra's feet began to split, whispering voices crawling up from the cracks.
"You failed."
"You broke the order."
"You defied the gods."
Vetala's scream shook the air — and so did Chakra's. His vision blurred, and the line between them shattered.
He felt the cold hand of the Vetala grip his heart from within, pulling, dragging his soul downward. The voice was inside him now — whispering softly, almost tenderly.
"You've seen it, haven't you? The pain… the hunger to undo time itself. You and I are the same."
"No…" Chakra gasped, falling to his knees as his hands turned ghostly pale. "I'm not like you!"
But the voice only laughed, a thousand echoes merging into one. His surroundings began to melt, the wasteland twisting into a world of shadows and mirrors.
Each reflection showed a different version of him — weak, broken, screaming, or kneeling before Vetala's decaying form. His own voice begged for release in those echoes.
"Surrender, child… let me be reborn through you."
Dark tendrils surged from the artifact in his hand, wrapping around his body. His veins darkened, his pulse slowing. His thoughts began to fade into static.
Possession was nearly complete.
And then… a sound broke through.
A single, pure tick.
Time itself trembled.
Light exploded from his chest, forming vast, intricate circles of golden glyphs — divine yet mechanical, rotating endlessly. The chains of shadow snapped, burning away into smoke.
The stopwatch — his stopwatch — floated out of his pocket, glowing like a newborn sun.
Runes shimmered across its surface, and one of them — a scripture — ignited with radiance.
From the depths of the light, a symbol emerged upon the watch's face:
"Bhūta-Kāla (भूतकाल) — The Past."
The moment the symbol appeared, the Vetala's artifact shrieked. The cursed energy burst into a dark mist and was instantly drawn into the stopwatch, as though devoured by time itself.
The air stilled.
And then — another vision struck Chakra like lightning.
The Vision of the Watch
He stood at the edge of an ocean that had no waves — an ocean that didn't move, didn't ripple. Time did not flow here. There was only silence.
Above that silent expanse floated a massive, luminous being reclining upon a serpent of infinity — Primordial Vishnu, eyes closed, lost in eternal slumber.
Then, from the endless horizon, came a ripple — a pulse of existence.
From that ripple, a spark of light drifted toward Vishnu's heart.
And from that light — a cry.
A child's cry.
The faintest wail that echoed through eternity.
Then the vision broke.
Chakra gasped awake in the darkness of his room. Sweat drenched his skin. His heart hammered. The stopwatch rested in his palm, its glow fading, but one scripture remained etched upon its surface — eternal, burning faintly.
"Bhūta-Kāla" — The Past.
He exhaled shakily. The system window blinked open before him.
[Quest Completed — Purification of Vetala's Fragment]
Rewards Granted:
Skill: Temporal Recollection (D-Rank) — Allows the user to witness and experience fragments of the past as memories, both personal and external.
Skill: Super Sense (E-Rank) — An evolved perception ability derived from Vetala's soul. Enhances awareness, reaction, and intuitive danger recognition far beyond normal senses.
Bonus Effect: The seal on the Stopwatch of Time has weakened.
Chakra fell back onto his bed, staring at the ceiling in silence. His mind raced with too many thoughts to contain — Vetala's sorrow, the ocean without time, the scripture, the child's cry.
"Why… do I keep seeing these?" he whispered. "Who was that child? And why… does it feel like I've heard that cry before?"
No answer came. Only the faint tick of the watch — as though it were listening, waiting.
Somewhere Else
Far from the quiet of Chakra's small apartment, in a tall spire overlooking the sleepless city, a man sat behind a desk of obsidian glass.
The room was dim, lit only by the blue glow of floating holographic runes.
He had silver eyes — calm, ancient, and weary. His coat bore the insignia of the IRO Central Division, yet the aura around him didn't belong to any mere human.
His gaze lingered on a single file projected before him — Chakra's image flickering beside the labyrinth clearance report.
Beneath it, one line blinked in red:
Temporal Energy Signature Detected — Origin: Unknown
The man leaned back, resting his hands together beneath his chin.
"So…" he murmured. "The time has awakened."
A faint smile crossed his lips — neither kind nor cruel, but knowing.
"Let's see, successor of time… whether you will become our salvation—"
"—or our greatest catastrophe."