"It was never a fantasy," Elara said, helping him up. "It was a prison. And you were its first inmate."

She dropped her sword. She doubled over. A real laugh tore from her throat—not silent, not frozen. And that was the difference.

In the floating realm of Aetheria, time did not pass—it tickled . The Great Chrono-Feather, a cosmic quill that wrote the laws of reality, had been plucked from the Celestial Rooster by a mischievous demigod named Kikkuri. Without the feather, time ceased to move forward, and all souls were trapped in an endless, shimmering present.