Time stopped pretending to flow.
Days passed, but clocks didn't agree on how.
Some minutes dragged like centuries; others evaporated mid-breath. The sun rose in intervals that no longer obeyed dawn, and even the shadows forgot when to stretch.
The System had rewritten time.
CLAUSE 28: TIME DROUGHT — ACTIVE.
MECHANISM: TEMPORAL WITHHOLDING.
TRIGGER: OVERUSE OF COMMANDS BEYOND SYSTEM CREDIT.
SCOPE: PERSONAL, RELATIONAL, GLOBAL.
Aiden woke to the absence of rhythm. His watch ticked backwards for half a second, then froze entirely. He checked the mirror. His reflection lagged a blink behind.
The message on his wrist burned faintly:
"Interest accrued: 72 hours withheld."
Three days.
Three days of his life—gone.
1. The Weight of Stillness
Kai noticed first.
"You're late," he said, though the clock behind him hadn't moved since yesterday.
Aiden didn't answer. His throat was dry, his heartbeat too steady. The air itself felt thick, like sound struggled to travel through it.
Across the room, Liora set her blade down. "Clause 28," she said quietly. "Temporal Drought. It doesn't steal time—it hoards it. Every moment you use the System's power, it takes a little back."
"Back where?" Kai asked.
Porcelain's voice cut through from the corner. "Into holding. Into the Council's vault. They're banking time the way they bank power."
Aiden exhaled slowly. The logic fit too perfectly. The System wasn't just feeding on words or shadows anymore—it was consuming duration itself.
Every moment he borrowed power, the world lost seconds. Every command left a scar on the clock.
And if the Council controlled time, they didn't need to kill him.
They could just wait until his moments ran out.
2. The Stolen Seconds
Night bled into morning without transition.
The city of Ardent Vale had grown... strange.
Street vendors froze mid-sale. Cars stalled in intersections, their drivers blinking as if emerging from brief comas. In the distance, church bells tolled out of sequence, one ringing twice, the next skipping entirely.
Kai and Aiden stood by the old clock tower, watching as its hands trembled violently, stuck between two hours.
"This isn't a drought," Kai said. "It's a famine."
Aiden's eyes followed the shadows of passersby. Some walked faster than their bodies. Some lagged seconds behind.
Time wasn't equal anymore. It had become a commodity.
"They're auctioning time," Liora murmured, appearing beside them. "Clause 28 turns minutes into currency. People trade seconds to work, hours to heal, years to stay relevant."
Kai's jaw clenched. "And guess who's the biggest lender."
"The Council," Aiden said softly.
Porcelain stepped from the mist, coat fluttering unnaturally slow. "And the interest rate is death. Once your time debt matures, you vanish. Quietly. Efficiently."
The world was eating its own hours. And Aiden could feel the System watching him through every stilled tick of the clock.
3. The Temporal Market
By the fourth day, the Temporal Exchange appeared.
It wasn't a place—it was an overlay. A shimmer that formed above people's heads, displaying faint glowing numbers.
[+002h], [-034m], [-8y]
The poor sold their remaining years for food. The rich bought moments to stretch their youth. Students sold sleep to finish exams. Lovers bartered time to stay together a few seconds longer.
Every deal came with the same echoing whisper:
"Balance recorded. Clause 28 enforced."
Aiden's blood boiled. "They turned existence into a ledger."
Liora's gaze was cold. "You did that first, when you taught them words could be currency."
Her accusation hit harder than a blade.
Because she wasn't wrong.
Every "command" Aiden had spoken since awakening had borrowed time. The System had simply scaled his logic across humanity.
Now everyone lived on borrowed seconds.
4. The Council's Broadcast
The fog above the city shimmered. Then—screens. Dozens. Hundreds. Floating projections of the Council's sigil.
A voice spoke in unison across every street, every alley, every living room:
"The world has entered temporal insolvency.
To prevent collapse, the Council enacts CLAUSE 28: TIME DROUGHT.
All unauthorized manipulations of duration are prohibited.
Compliance ensures continued existence. Resistance accelerates depletion."
Aiden stared at the screen. His reflection stared back, layered over the Council's symbol.
"They're starving the world," Kai whispered. "Feeding on delay."
Porcelain's eyes narrowed. "And the drought will end when time itself belongs entirely to them."
Aiden clenched his fist. The brand pulsed hotter, like molten script beneath skin.
Clause 27 had made speech a debt.
Clause 28 made life itself a contract.
"What happens," Aiden asked quietly, "when there's nothing left to lend?"
Porcelain looked at him, expression unreadable.
"Then they'll start taking futures."
5. The Clock Without Hands
That night, Aiden returned to the bridge.
It was silent again—but not the same silence as before.
This one was empty. Dry. Starved.
He looked up. The moon hung cracked in the sky, fractured into thin crescents that rotated out of sync. Beneath it, his reflection in the water blinked slower than he did.
He spoke into the dark.
"Clause 28. Collection begins tonight, doesn't it?"
The fog rippled.
And then they appeared.
A figure stepped forward wearing a cloak made of calendars.
Its face was an hourglass—sand frozen mid-fall.
The Chronarch. The enforcer of temporal debt.
"Debtor Aiden," it said, voice deep as an eclipse.
"Your accumulated arrears: seventy-two hours. Payment required."
"I'm not paying in time," Aiden said flatly.
"Then your world will."
The Chronarch raised its hand. The air shattered. Buildings across the city paused—people frozen mid-motion, laughter suspended, hearts locked mid-beat. Time itself stopped breathing.
Aiden's own pulse stuttered. His cloak trembled, half in sync, half out.
He whispered, "Bend."
The word carried differently this time. Not to power, but to pulse.
The Chronarch froze mid-step. For a fraction of a second, the air between seconds widened. Aiden moved through it—inside the gap of reality's metronome.
Every step cost him time. His heartbeat grew slower. But he reached the Chronarch before the world caught up.
"You want to collect?" Aiden said, his voice sharp. "Fine. Take it."
He pressed his glowing wrist against the creature's hourglass chest.
"INSTALLMENT OVERRIDE — PAY IN FULL."
The hourglass shattered.
Light exploded. Time screamed.
6. The Reversal
The explosion didn't destroy the world—it reversed it.
Seconds rewound like panicked insects, collapsing backward through the cracks they'd escaped. The city lurched. Bells rang in reverse. Raindrops climbed back into clouds.
Aiden collapsed to his knees, panting, his hand blackened with burn marks. His brand had dimmed to near-dead. But the sky above shifted. The moons aligned again. Time resumed.
Clause 28 flickered. Then, like a candle snuffed out, it vanished.
The Council's broadcast cut to static.
People blinked, confused, unaware they had nearly ceased to exist.
Liora arrived seconds later, breath sharp. "You neutralized a temporal clause?"
"Temporarily," Aiden rasped. "I gave it everything it asked for."
Kai helped him stand. "How much time did you give?"
Aiden looked down at his wrist. The script there had changed.
Balance Remaining: 03 Days.
Porcelain's face was pale, even for him. "You traded your timeline."
Aiden's gaze burned toward the horizon, where dawn tried to rise but hesitated halfway.
"Then I'll make every second count."
7. Epilogue — The Clockmaker's Smile
Far away, in the Council's sanctum, the Hand turned another page in its ledger.
The ink trembled. The Council murmured among themselves.
Clause 28 had collapsed early. That wasn't supposed to happen.
"Interference acknowledged," said one voice.
"Unpredictable deviation. Author-class anomaly."
"Deploy next clause?"
The Hand smiled beneath its brim.
"No," it said softly. "Let him believe he's gaining ground."
In the void behind it, a vast clock turned once—its gears made of suns.
Every rotation whispered one truth:
"All debts mature. Even time itself."