At the age of 6,050, a deep tear opened in the side of the world. People came to see it, but no one could explain it. It didn’t glow. It didn’t move. It was just... there. Ian walked near it once. It smelled like burnt cloth and old ink.
At the age of 6,200, a great bell rang in the sky. No one knew who rang it. It sounded once. Then silence followed for thirty days straight. Many feared it was a sign. Others simply forgot it happened.
At the age of 6,300, Ian walked past a war. Devils and gods burned the land with powers beyond names. Ian didn’t stop. He only watched as flames swallowed both sides. Some called him cruel. Others called him wise.
At the age of 6,400, Jow, God of Rubber, turned a dying beast into a ball and threw it into space. It became a moon. He called it "Bounce." Ian rolled his eyes, but deep down, smiled.
At the age of 6,500, the skies grew quiet.
Ian sat at the edge of a cliff when he felt it. Not pain, just stillness.
A dark flame floated across the sky. Not fire. Not smoke. Just an ending.
Ral, the quiet Devil who had once taught him how to sharpen silence into strength. Ral, who never spoke unless the words mattered. Ral, who once said, "When I die, let it mean something."
Ian stood up. The sky above didn’t cry. The earth didn’t shake.
At the age of 6,510, Ian stood before what remained of Ral’s last trace, a circle of black ash and a single piece of broken horn. He crouched down, fingers brushing the ground. It was cold, too cold for this realm.
Something had touched this place that did not belong.
At the age of 6,520, Ian visited old places, deep holes under forgotten cities, high towers with broken clocks, quiet valleys where no sound had lived for years. Each place held small hints: a symbol etched into stone, a word carved behind an altar, a shadow that didn’t belong to anything nearby.
The same mark kept showing up, a curve, sharp at the end, like a half-closed eye.
At the age of 6,530, he searched the Dead Library. No gods walked there anymore. The books turned their own pages, and the walls hummed with faint voices. Ian followed the marks until he found a page stitched from skin. The eye-mark was burned onto it, along with one word: Returner.
At the age of 6,540, he asked the Grand Devil, "What is a Returner?"
She did not speak at first. Then: "They are not made. They are not born. They are brought back."
"From endings that were not finished."
At the age of 6,550, Ian found an old Devil who had once served beside Ral. He was missing half his face. His voice was smoke.
"Ral found something he shouldn’t," the old Devil said. "Not power. Not truth. A name."
The Devil smiled, toothless. "I forgot it the moment he spoke it."
At the age of 6,570, Ian began to see more signs, realms left empty without reason, people frozen in time like statues, memories in the sky that didn’t match the past. It wasn’t random. It was all part of something. A design.
At the age of 6,590, he saw a dream inside another dream. Ral stood there, speaking to someone who looked like Ian, but was not Ian. That other version wore no horn. His eyes were empty.
He woke up with a name in his mouth but lost it before it could leave his lips.
At the age of 6,599, Ian stood before the broken edge of a giant mirror. It was cracked in three places. His reflection did not move with him. Behind it was a message, slowly forming in light:
"Only the final name will tie the end to the start."
At the age of 6,600, he returned to the field where the tree with black leaves still stood. Beneath it was a fresh carving, new, rough, hurried.
His face looked wrong. Afraid. Desperate.
Below it, one line was scratched deep into the bark:
"It was never about time. It was about..."
But the last word had been carved out.
At the age of 6,610, Ian stood beneath the tree of black leaves for hours, staring at the missing word. His fingers touched the rough bark, feeling the deep cut where the truth had been burned out. Wind passed, but the leaves did not fall. They never did.
And the dots began to move.
The dream of himself, but not himself.
At the age of 6,611, Ian returned to the Dead Library and found the skin page again. He held it in his hand until it warmed. The word Returner shifted, letters swimming slowly... and became Re-turner. Not one who comes back, but one who turns something back.
He blinked. A soft pain bloomed behind his eyes.
At the age of 6,612, he remembered the symbols in the old ruins. All those half-closed eyes weren’t eyes, they were levers.
And they weren’t from the present. They weren’t from the past either.
They were from the middle.
At the age of 6,620, Ian sat with Jow, who was trying to bounce a world. He failed again.
"I don’t get it," Jow groaned. "What’s the point of being a god if we just keep breaking things?"
Ian stared at him. "Maybe that is the point."
Jow tilted his head. "To break them?"
Ian looked away. "No. To test what still works after they break."
At the age of 6,650, he went to the mirror again, the one that didn’t reflect him. This time, it showed something new: the same field, the same tree, but no sky. Just a white void. And under the tree stood... Ral.
Speaking to someone with no body.
"Let me do it," Ral said. "He won’t break. But he might bend."
At the age of 6,670, Ian climbed the mountain that had once told him to forget why. This time, he reached the top. There was nothing there.
Nothing except a ring of ash.
Just like where Ral had died.
It had never been about time.
It was about the story.
The arc. The path. The cycle of belief.
At the age of 6,690, Ian sat in silence and said aloud, "The loop was a cage. The Returner is the key. But if Ral gave the key away... then who used it?"
A whisper answered:"You did."
At the age of 6,700, Ian returned to the mirror one last time. He placed his hand on the glass.
And the world behind it accepted him.
What he saw made his thoughts split apart.