The Guardian gods

From the throne, Keles's eyes lowered to watch them, the smile on her lips deepening ever so slightly.

Then the world bent. Kairos moved not in the present, but along branching moments yet to come. For an instant, there were three of him:

One sweeping in low, his blade angled to sever her arm.

One appearing directly above, dropping with a strike aimed for her crown.

One standing perfectly still, watching for the instant she reacted.

The strikes came together, a web of future possibilities woven around her.

Keles didn't rise.

The shadows surged from beneath her throne, not toward the Kairos in front of her, but into the future itself. The first attacker's thread snapped like a frayed cord, the possibility of his strike erased before the blade could connect. The one above her dissolved mid-fall, as though he had never been real.

"You see it now," Keles said, her voice smooth and resonant in the void. "Your foresight draws paths. I can simply decide which ones are allowed to exist."

Kairos stepped back, the threads in his hand dimming slightly. He had been certain no one could reach into the future branches he pulled from yet here she was, plucking them apart like loose stitches.

She leaned into the armrest of her throne, her hand resting on her belly as the shadows coiled tighter around her. "You weave your moments like a craftsman. But crafts can be undone. I…" she gestured lazily to the encroaching dark, "…I am the end that awaits all threads."

Kairos's gaze sharpened. The air around him began to ripple — faintly, almost imperceptibly. She had forced him to acknowledge the truth: if he wanted to survive this battle, he would have to use everthing he had.

Keles tilted her head, sensing the shift. Her smile grew sharper. "Finally."

The rippling in the air around Kairos deepened, spreading in concentric waves that shimmered faintly against the weight of Keles's darkness. The goddess watched, her fingers tapping idly on the bone of her throne, the sound muted as if the void itself swallowed it.

"You hide a great deal behind that robe, Emperor," she said. "Show me."

Kairos did not answer. His hands rose slowly, and the shimmer became threads countless, delicate lines of light unraveling from him in every direction. They were not bound to the ground or to space; they wove through the darkness as though the void were nothing more than fabric.

The darkness resisted. The threads met it and hissed, their glow flickering where shadow touched them. Keles's smile never faltered, but the shadows around her throne stirred uneasily, as though sensing something dangerous in their midst.

Then, with a sharp snap, the threads anchored themselves.

The void shifted. The formless black began to take on structure — faint outlines, ghostly afterimages of paths yet to be walked. Before Keles's throne, a hundred silhouettes of herself and Kairos flickered in and out of existence: some standing, some striking, some turning away. Each was a possibility, a fate drawn from the web Kairos had spread.

"This…" Keles said, her eyes narrowing just slightly, "…is your domain?"

"Fatesight," Kairos replied, his voice cold and even. "The end you decide is not the only one that exists. Here, every thread is laid bare and I choose which are cut."

The darkness around her pulsed, pressing against the threads like a living tide. She leaned forward, her expression shifting into something between amusement and expectation.

The void quaked under the strain.

Threads of fate lashed outward from Kairos in brilliant arcs, tangling through Keles's darkness. Every time the shadows tried to consume one, another cut across its path, severing the death-born tendrils before they could root themselves.

Keles leaned forward on her throne, her gaze sweeping over the tangled web he had cast. "A fragile thing," she murmured, letting a finger trail along one of the glowing threads near her seat. It sizzled where her touch grazed it, fraying before retreating. "Pretty… but fragile."

Kairos's voice cut through the stillness. "Fragile… yet enough to bind even you."

With a flick of his hand, the web around her tightened, and for a moment she was surrounded dozens of paths converging, each one ending in her defeat. To her left, a Kairos impaled her with his clock hand blade. To her right, another severed her head cleanly. Behind her, a third dissolved her into nothing with a time-lock sigil.

The goddess regarded the possible deaths with mild interest. "So many little dreams," she said, and the shadows surged. One by one, the paths dissolved — each fate she was shown reduced to the same cold stillness, erased from the weave as though it had never been.

Kairos's eyes narrowed. He could feel the edges of his vision already the familiar pressure that told him he was at the very brink of his domain's reach. Only a few more seconds into the future, and he pushed.

For a heartbeat, the web expanded. His sight went further, threading through moments beyond the safe boundary. He saw Keles's movements not seconds ahead, but deeper, where her shadows began to fracture.

A Familiar voice spoke to him again "You are not ready for what is beyond this point."

Everything beyond that point vanished, replaced by the looming presence of a figure standing in the timestream faceless, yet impossibly vast, its silhouette cutting across every thread he had ever seen. The weight of its gaze pressed into him without eyes, without motion, without end.

Kairos staggered. The threads wavered. Keles moved, her darkness surged along the nearest weakened strand, not cutting it claiming it, flooding it with her deathly stillness. The path convulsed, then shattered, the break rippling backward into the present.

Kairos jerked his hand back, severing the infected line before it could spread further through his web. His breath was steady, but the frown on his face had deepened.

"That look…" Keles said, her smile sharpening, "you saw something. Something you weren't meant to."

Keles's smile sharpened, her voice a low purr. "That look… you saw something. Something you weren't meant to."

Kairos said nothing. He couldn't. The fury burned behind his eyes, a hot, useless fire. He was a master of time, a weaver of fates, and yet he had been stopped dead in his tracks, his domain shattered by a presence that defied his understanding. The fact that Keles could sense his turmoil, could almost taste his defeat, was a bitter pill to swallow.

As a time mage whose domain was Fatesight, Kairos knew the inherent danger of his power. He had been taught the rules from a young age: never change a major event, never paradox yourself out of existence, and never, under any circumstances, delve too deep. The price for such hubris was always catastrophic, a ripple that could turn the calm river of time into a chaotic maelstrom.

The being in the timestream was a constant in his long existence. He called it the Warden. It wasn't a god or a demon, but a part of the stream itself, a silent guardian that maintained its equilibrium. It was the first barrier he had encountered when he began to truly master his power. Before, he could only glimpse the fringes of the stream, a hazy window into what was to come. A few centuries later, he could step into the stream, navigate its currents, and even take a few tentative steps into the future. But there was always a point where the Warden would appear, a faceless colossus that blocked his path, a physical representation of his own limitations.

Its presence wasn't a punishment but a lesson. It represented his own progress, his growing understanding of the cosmic river he played in. Each time he reached a new milestone in his power, the Warden's presence would be a little further away, its form a little less imposing. But today, he had pushed too far, trying to breach a boundary he wasn't ready for. The Warden's sudden, overwhelming appearance was a stark reminder that even after all this time, he was still just a student of a power far greater than himself.

The threads shivered in Kairos's grasp, a warning that his reach had been strained to breaking. Keles was advancing now — not in steps, but in the way the darkness itself seemed to lean forward, swallowing the distance grain by grain.

"You're bleeding seconds," she said.

Kairos exhaled slowly, the faint blue glow under his hood flaring brighter. For the first time since arriving in this darkness, he let his mana pour out freely.

The shadows shivered.

Keles tilted her head, sensing a shift in the air.

The ground beneath them if it could be called that, it rippled like liquid glass. Behind Kairos, faint silhouettes of himself began to appear, each frozen mid-step, mid-strike, mid-motion. They weren't illusions. They were seconds pulled from both his past and his yet-to-come future.

The goddess's eyes narrowed. "Ah… you're trying to cheat the moment."

Kairos didn't answer. His form blurred and the afterimages moved. One leapt forward from the past, another lunged from a fraction of a second ahead, and the real Kairos struck from the present. Three Kairoi, three points in the timeline, attacking together.