"Those who master time need no allies — only witnesses."
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The Battle in the Palace
The Palace of Endless Yesterdays shook with every clash of Stand energy.
Every column, every gear, every clock in the dimension groaned under the pressure of too many realities overlapping.
The air itself fractured into mirrored shards of moments — showing flashes of the heroes' past, their victories, their regrets — all bleeding together in the chaos.
Akira, Hiroshi, and Daisuke stood in formation.
All three were wounded, burned, and half-phased out of time — their bodies glitching between ages, from children to old men in an instant, before stabilizing again.
Ahead of them, Minh and Cetz stood side by side.
But that uneasy alliance was already beginning to unravel.
---
The Symphony of Ruin
Cetz raised his hands. Mirage Symphony expanded outward — an ocean of refracted light swallowing the palace.
Dozens of false timelines branched from his illusion, each one showing a different version of Minh, Akira, and the others — some alive, some dead, some never existing at all.
He smirked, voice dripping with arrogance.
"Even gods need a mirror to see their flaws. Minh, I'll show you every possibility you've ever denied."
Minh didn't answer. His crimson eyes scanned the illusions calmly.
Then, almost imperceptibly, his expression darkened.
"Cetz," Minh said quietly, "you've always misunderstood time. You believe reflection equals truth. But all mirrors eventually shatter."
Before Cetz could react, Chrono Requiem moved.
---
The Betrayal
Time froze.
Not figuratively — literally. Every illusion, every ripple, every molecule of motion stopped.
Cetz turned his head slowly, realization dawning too late.
His Stand — Mirage Symphony — was trapped in perfect stillness, its notes frozen mid-air like glass.
"Minh… what are you doing?"
Minh stepped forward, his expression void of emotion. "Completing the equation. You've served your purpose — your illusions measured the boundary of perception. Now, your death will expand it."
"Don't—"
Minh placed his palm on Cetz's chest.
The Palace trembled. Chrono Requiem's gears whirred into overdrive, spinning at impossible speed.
Cetz screamed — a sound that split across every timeline at once. His mask shattered, revealing not just his face, but all versions of his face — young, old, burned, hollow, all flickering in and out of existence.
His body fractured like glass, every shard showing a different reality:
A Cetz who never met Minh.
A Cetz who killed him.
A Cetz who stayed human.
A Cetz who was loved.
Each fragment dissolved into particles of light, sucked into Minh's chest — absorbed into Chrono Requiem's hourglass heart.
When it was over, only silence remained.
Akira took a step forward, horrified.
"You… you killed him. Your own brother-in-arms."
Minh turned slowly, his expression calm — too calm.
"Cetz was never alive," he said. "He was a reflection I created when I first fractured time. The original Cetz died years ago. This was merely the echo of his will."
---
The Reaction
The Palace screamed.
The gears spun faster. The floor melted into flowing seconds.
By killing Cetz's temporal echo, Minh had broken the last stabilizing thread holding the timeline together.
Akira felt it first — Echo Chamber resonating violently against the rising distortion.
"He's destabilizing everything!"
Hiroshi's sword burned white-hot. "If we don't stop him now, he'll collapse the entire continuum!"
Minh floated upward, his Stand expanding until it filled the palace — a clockwork angel stretching across infinity.
"You can't stop what's already ended," Minh said. "The Rift was never a portal — it was a recursion point. Every battle, every death, every choice… all leading to this moment."
Akira shouted through the rising noise. "Minh! You'll destroy yourself too!"
Minh smiled faintly — almost human again.
"That's the only way forward. To escape the loop, I must die… inside it."
He extended both arms. Chrono Requiem's wings unfurled, each feather a collapsing timeline.
---
The Spiral of Erasure
The Palace imploded.
Gears shattered.
Memories screamed.
The heroes were dragged upward into the collapsing vortex, each moment pulling them into a different age of their own lives.
Akira saw his mother's face — the day he lost her.
Hiroshi saw his dojo in flames.
Daisuke saw his car crash replay, his Stand awakening again and again.
They weren't dying — they were being rewritten.
Akira fought to keep focus. "Echo Chamber — Resonance Field: Anchor Pulse!"
He forced a stabilizing hum, trying to lock the team into the present.
But Minh's voice echoed across all of time.
"You cling to the present, Akira, but the present never exists. It's just a memory pretending to be real."
Then, Minh turned his Stand toward them.
"Chrono Requiem: Final Movement — The Stillness Beyond Time."
Light engulfed everything.
The heroes screamed as they were pulled into the singularity — into Minh's Stand itself.
---
The Vanishing
From the outside, the Palace was gone.
Only fragments of time remained — frozen shards drifting through the void like dust.
Inside that void, no one could tell where or when they were.
The heroes and Minh were all swallowed — not dead, not alive — trapped inside the heartbeat of eternity.
Somewhere, deep within the void, Akira's voice echoed faintly:
"…I can still hear it. The resonance hasn't died yet."
Then — silence.
And for the first time since time began — Minh smiled.
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