I Became the Timekeeper: Juno and the Minutes of her Shattered Deaths

"The weight of your choices is not measured by the lives they save but by the lives they leave behind."

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The air in this warped memory was thick and suffocating, as if Juno's lungs were being slowly smothered by ash. Shadows clung to every surface, stretching unnaturally, moving when they shouldn't. Somewhere in the distance, the muffled cries of a child echoed—a sound she knew all too well. A sound she wanted to unhear.

Juno crouched low, her boots sinking into the damp, uneven ground. Her reflection walked ahead, a haunting silhouette against the faint glow of torchlight carried by the cultists. The hooded figure moved with purpose, each step quiet yet deliberate, the gleaming Chronosword in its grip humming faintly like a frozen whisper.

Juno's own breathing felt louder than it should have been, her chest rising and falling as if her lungs couldn't find enough air in this place. No system, no weapon, and no plan. She was at the mercy of her instincts, which had never felt shakier. Her reflection, on the other hand, seemed untouchable. It glided like a specter, its dark hood fluttering faintly behind it. That thing was more than a version of her. It was a predator in every sense of the word.

She stayed a few paces behind, keeping her body pressed against the rough walls of what used to be her prison. The ancient stone felt colder than she remembered, the jagged edges biting into her fingertips as she slid along, avoiding the cultists. Their robes were the same—grayish black with crimson, vein-like patterns running down the fabric. Their faces were hidden by masks etched with arcane symbols, symbols she knew could paralyze her if they caught her in their gaze.

But she didn't look at them. Her eyes were fixed on her reflection.

It stopped suddenly, its shoulders tense, the Chronosword vanishing in a pulse of fading light. One of the cultists, braver—or more foolish—than the others, stepped forward, his ritual knife drawn. The blade was grotesque, curved like a talon and riddled with cracks that seeped faint violet light.

The reflection didn't even turn. Its voice rang out, cold and venomous.

"Where is she?"

The cultist froze, his grip on the knife faltering. The others shifted uneasily, glancing between each other, unsure how to respond.

Juno ducked behind a crumbled pillar, pressing her back against it. She clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms. The child. Why was the reflection so obsessed with finding the younger version of herself?

The cultist finally spoke, his voice trembling under the weight of the reflection's presence. "You're familiar. This... this is not your place. Not your time."

Wrong answer.

In a single blink, the reflection was on him. The Chronosword reappeared mid-swing, slicing through the air with an eerie, metallic hiss. The cultist's head hit the ground before the rest of his body realized it had been severed.

The remaining cultists broke into chaos. They screamed, shouting incoherent chants as they surged toward the reflection, their ritual weapons raised.

Juno took her chance. Her eyes darted to a pile of broken debris nearby—what used to be part of the sacrificial altar. She grabbed a jagged piece of stone, her fingers trembling as she hurled it toward the far wall. It clattered loudly, echoing through the chamber.

The cultists spun around, their attention momentarily diverted. But it wasn't enough to save them. The reflection moved like a storm, its body flickering with afterimages as it split into duplicates of itself. Four of them now, each wielding a glowing Chronosword, tearing through the cultists with ruthless efficiency.

"I should've done this before," the reflection snarled, its voice laced with frustration and something else—regret. "All of you deserved to die back then. Every last one of you."

Juno didn't stick around to hear the rest. She slipped into the nearest corridor, her footsteps muffled against the damp floor. Her heart pounded as she ran, the weight of her mission crashing down on her. She had to find the child. She had to protect her younger self—no matter what.

The corridors twisted and turned like a maze, each corner bringing another haunting memory to the surface. Bloodstains on the walls. The faint smell of burning flesh. The sound of chains rattling in the distance.

Finally, she found it. A heavy, iron door, slightly ajar. The faint light of a flickering torch spilled out into the hallway.

She pushed it open slowly, her hands shaking.

The room was small, barely more than a cell. In the center, huddled on the floor, was the child—her younger self. Her tiny body was battered, her clothes soaked in blood, her hair matted against her pale face.

Juno's chest tightened. The sight of her younger self like this, so helpless, so broken, was almost too much to bear.

Without realizing it, tears streamed down her face. She wiped them away quickly, her vision blurring. She knelt beside the child, gently lifting her into her arms.

The girl was unconscious but breathing, her small chest rising and falling with shallow breaths.

"You're okay," Juno whispered, though the words felt hollow. "I've got you."

The child didn't respond.

Juno carried her out of the room, her legs trembling under the weight—not of the child, but of the memories this place dragged out of her. She moved as quietly as she could, ducking into the shadows whenever she heard footsteps or distant screams.

Every sound felt amplified—the creak of the floor beneath her boots, the ragged breaths escaping her lips, the faint hum of the Chronosword as the reflection tore through anyone in its path.

She didn't know where she was going. She just knew she had to get her younger self to safety.

But safety was a distant dream in this place.

The suffocating stench of blood filled the air, clinging to Juno's skin like a second layer. She crouched behind a shattered column, her breath uneven, her thoughts swirling like a storm. Her reflection—a future version of herself—moved with terrifying precision, each step calculated, each movement deadly. She was a specter of vengeance cloaked in chaos, wielding a wrath that Juno couldn't even fathom.

The carnage was almost artistic in its horror. The cultists—draped in tattered robes of deep crimson and dull gold—were reduced to lifeless forms sprawled across the ancient stone floor. Blood pooled beneath their bodies, reflecting the dim, flickering light of the room's arcane lanterns. Juno's hands trembled as she tightened her grip on the unconscious child in her arms.

Her younger self.

She glanced down at the fragile form, her own face staring back at her from years ago—paler, smaller, and more innocent than she could remember being. Her mind screamed at the absurdity of it all. Was this really her future? A blood-soaked specter cutting down enemies like weeds, utterly unrecognizable in her ruthlessness?

"Not me," she whispered under her breath, barely audible. Her voice trembled, uncertain. "I can't— I won't become that."

Her reflection was a nightmare come to life. The figure's long, unbound hair moved as though caught in a phantom breeze, streaked with crimson from the slaughter. Her iridescent black coat shimmered faintly under the dim light, its surface etched with pulsating veins of violet energy. She moved without hesitation, her Chronosword cleaving through the cultists like paper, leaving behind faint distortions in the air where time itself seemed to falter.

Juno forced herself to look away. She had to focus. She scanned the room, her hazel-green eyes darting to every corner, searching for a place to hide her younger self. The child—her—was still unconscious, the tiny frame limp in her arms, the bloodstained clothes a haunting mirror of her past.

Her gaze settled on a shadowed alcove near the far wall. The ancient carvings around it hummed faintly with dormant magic, the kind that could conceal them—if only for a while. But reaching it meant crossing open ground, right through the slaughterhouse her reflection had created.

The sharp clang of metal against stone jolted her back to the present. Her reflection had thrown the Chronosword—a sleek, silver blade with jagged edges that shimmered with temporal energy—like a spear. It impaled a fleeing cultist mid-step, pinning them to the wall. The reflection didn't even flinch as she closed the distance, her steps echoing with chilling finality.

"Ruthless," Juno thought, her stomach churning. "But... she's me. Isn't she? How—how does it come to this?"

She pressed herself against the column, trying to calm her breathing. The stone was cold against her back, grounding her in the moment.

"This is who I'll be," she thought bitterly. "Cold. Efficient. Heartless." She glanced down at the child in her arms, feeling the weight of her younger self. "But I can't let her—me—become this."

The sound of flesh hitting stone snapped her attention back to her reflection. The figure stood over the last cultist, who was crawling backward, pleading incoherently. The reflection tilted her head, almost curious, before raising her boot and bringing it down with brutal force. The sickening crunch echoed through the chamber.

Juno swallowed hard. She couldn't let the child see this.

Then, a sound unlike anything she'd ever heard split the air—a low, resonant hum that vibrated through her bones. A jagged line of void-purple light tore through the space ahead, a rift unfurling like a wound in reality. From it stepped Agredor.

The Void Lord of Memory Dreaming.

His presence was suffocating, his towering frame draped in an armor-like cloak of shifting shadows and dark tendrils. His face was hidden beneath a horned helm that seemed alive, the surface crawling with tiny, glowing runes. In his hand, he held a staff crowned with a pulsating orb of void energy, tendrils of black and violet snaking out like hungry vines.

"I thought you're always in control, yet you had the difficulty of finding me here," She whispered to herself, her heart sinking.

Her reflection turned to face him, unfazed. The Chronosword returned to her hand in a flash of light, the blade humming with anticipation.

"You're late," the reflection said, her voice colder than ice.

Agredor chuckled, the sound deep and resonant, like distant thunder. "Timekeeper," he said, his tone mocking. "Or should I call you Failure now? Look at what you've become. A butcher, instead of trying to help me find her, you're here doing this mess, being a shadow of your purpose."

"I am trying to fulfill my purpose and undone everything," the reflection shot back. "Unlike you, clinging to scraps of power in the Void."

Juno's breath hitched. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Her future self and Agredor... talking. Planning. What was this?

Their conversation continued, laced with tension and thinly veiled threats. Agredor spoke of a grand design, of using Juno—her—as a pawn to manipulate the timelines. The reflection, however, seemed disinterested, her focus on erasing both Agredor and the cultists from existence.

"You think it's easy to corrupt the sentient minds of her memories that drains me of my will? Both of us are clinging to her power as we exist in this headspace, and yet it seems I'm the only one who was doing most of our goal." Agredor spoke.

Juno thought to herself, clinging to my power? Perhaps my rewind power? What could that mean?

"Aren't I the one who kept killing and killing her and figuring out she must be hiding here? You're twisting things, trying to twist my thoughts, that was such a wrong move of you, Void Lord." The reflection replied.

But then the tone shifted. Agredor's patience wore thin, his words dripping with venom. "You think you can defy me, Timekeeper? You are nothing but a tool—a broken one at that. Without my corruption of the void and the memories, you won't be able to seek the connection of your times and find her here. Without me, you cannot correct your messed up timeline and erase her. We're just in her several rewind and not yet through her 50th loop and you're already defying me. Pathetic."

The reflection's grip tightened on the Chronosword, the blade's glow intensifying. "And you think you're untouchable? You're a parasite, feeding on chaos. I should've destroyed you along with the rest of them."

"Try it," Agredor hissed.

The room exploded into chaos.

The reflection surged forward, the Chronosword slicing through the air with a high-pitched whine. Agredor countered with a wave of void energy, the force of it sending shockwaves through the chamber. The walls cracked, the ancient carvings splintering as the two clashed.

Juno didn't wait to see who would gain the upper hand. She tightened her grip on the child and darted toward the alcove, her boots sliding on the blood-slicked floor.

"Just a little further," she thought, her heart pounding. The air was thick with the energy of the battle, each collision between the reflection and Agredor sending tremors through the ground.

She reached the alcove and ducked inside, laying the child gently on the floor. Her younger self's face was pale, the blood on her clothes stark against her small frame. Juno's chest tightened.

"I won't let you become that," she whispered, brushing a strand of hair from the child's face. "I promise."

The sound of the battle grew louder, the light from the void rift casting eerie shadows across the chamber. Juno turned to look, her eyes widening as she saw Agredor summon a monstrous void beast, its form shifting and writhing as if it couldn't decide what it wanted to be.

The reflection didn't hesitate, raising the Chronosword and shouting, "Temporal Severance!" The blade erupted with energy, its light cutting through the darkness as she charged.

Juno didn't stay to watch. She picked up the child again, her arms trembling under the weight—not just physical, but emotional. She needed to get them both out of here.

As she ran, the chaos behind her raged on, the echoes of the battle following her into the dark corridors. She didn't know where she was going, but she knew one thing for sure.

That from their talk, they're both trapped in her memories.

She'll do everything to take advantage of that... and she wasn't going to let this timeline define her.