Chapter 27.5: Chronophobia.
October 8th, 4:03 AM – Inside the Dream
*Tick!*
*Tick.*
* Tick!*
Clocks.
Hundreds of them.
Some grand and ornate, gilded in gold leaf.
Some cracked, shattered, bleeding rust down their glass faces.
Some running forward.
Some ticking backward.
Some spinning endlessly in circles.
Each chime echoed like a scream.
*DING!*
And the dreamscape shifted.
She was now walking through a paper forest. The trees were made of stacked reports. Pages rustled in the wind like whispers. The words on the documents kept changing, flickering violently between past, present, and future tense.
"Victim"
"Survivor"
"Uncooperative"
"Delusional"
"Liability"
Each step Nino took left footprints of ink and blood.
The wind howled with a metallic rasp, and as she turned a corner, her feet sank into a field of torn limbs.
Dozens-maybe hundreds of dismembered arms and legs, sprawled like discarded puppets.
Each one had a word carved into the skin with a jagged tool:
'Aqua'
'Aqua'
'Aqua'
Some were fresh.
Some had scabbed over.
Some were so old they looked fossilized.
*Tick.*
*Tick.*
*Tick.*
A wall of mirrors rose before her. None of them showed her reflection.
They showed him.
That day.
The memory returned. Not a vision. A confirmation.
---
She stood at the edge of a shadowed alleyway, the lamplight flickering like a dying heartbeat.
Three figures swaggered toward her.
The middle one-smiling with cracked teeth and dead eyes.
"Hey there, little lady- Alone tonight?"
She stared at them.
Disgust blooming in her eyes like a bruise.
"No, I'm not alone. And what if I were?"
He grinned, sick with rot.
"Then I'd say that pretty face could use a slap. Make a nice mark."
Her jaw tightened. No fear. Not yet.
"Go ahead. Let's see if your jaw stays in one piece."
That set him off.
It always did.
Just like last time.
Two of them lunged-grabbing her arms.
And the leader stepped forward, his tongue wetting his bottom lip.
Everything-the weight of their hands, the smell of their sweat, the flicker of neon overhead-felt like reenactment. Not reality. Like she was inside an old script being forced to repeat its lines.
'Things are going the same as before...'
---
She knew what came next.
The first blow.
The flash of nausea.
The ripping.
The voice she begged not to hear.
But something cracked.
The mirrors shattered.
The clocks collapsed. The limbs twitched.
And from the raining glass above, a voice whispered-
〔Then change the script.〕
She opened her eyes.
But the dream wasn't over.
She stood now in a cathedral made of ticking metronomes, the ceiling a sky of watches without hands.
And in the center...
A throne made from clocks, melted and fused together, sat Aqua.
Not smiling now.
His face melted. Reformed. Melted again. A loop of expressions repeating.
She stepped forward, but each step made the floor flash a memory:
Her mother crying.
Akeshi, bloodied, eyes soft.
Her grandfather, silent and holding his chest.
Her own face, mouthing the word "coward" again and again.
The throne crumbled as she reached it.
And underneath it?
A mirror.
Finally showing her reflection.
But her reflection smiled... first.
A second before she did.